NEW DELHI, Feb 17: The main accused in the sensational murder of India's "bandit queen" escaped from a high-security prison in New Delhi on Tuesday with the help of accomplices disguised as police, officials said.
Sher Singh Rana, who was awaiting trial for the July 2001 killing of low-caste women's icon Phoolan Devi, walked out of the crowded Tihar jail with a "police" escort - who turned out to be fellow bandits come to free him.
"It is an incredible jail-break. At 7am (0130 GMT) we handed Rana over to a policeman from (the northern hill state of) Uttaranchal as he showed us a warrant saying he had come to collect Rana to produce him before the court," said a warden, who did not want to be identified.
"There were other 'policemen' waiting near a police van. We did not suspect a thing ... Later we got a shock when another police party turned up at the gates of Tihar with a warrant to take Rana away."
Rana was arrested shortly after Devi, then a member of parliament, was shot dead by three masked men as she got out of a car at the gate of her New Delhi residence.
Police said Rana confessed to murdering Devi to avenge the deaths of 22 upper-caste Hindus she killed on Valentine's Day in 1981. Devi said the Valentine's Day massacre in the north Indian village of Behmai was in retaliation for her gangrape by upper-caste Hindus.
The illiterate villager's story - immortalized in an autobiography which she promoted in Europe and in the 1994 film "Bandit Queen" - won her a larger-than-life image as a brave woman who fought upper-caste tyranny.
Tihar prison jail director general Ajay Aggarwal ordered a massive manhunt for the escapee. "He has sent four teams after Rana and his friends. By now they would have dumped the van they used to drive away from here but we are working on some other good clues," said the warden.
New Delhi police offered a reward of 50,000 rupees (1,111 dollars) for information leading to Rana's capture, police official Satish Golcha said. "The Tihar authorities have informed us of Rana's escape from prison this morning and we have launched our investigations into the matter," Golcha said.
Devi, born in a small village in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh in 1963, began life as a fugitive at age 16 when she was kidnapped, reportedly at the instigation of a family member, by bandits who operated in the Chambal ravines in central India. -AFP
