NEW DELHI, Feb 18: Three senior officials at a high-security New Delhi jail have been suspended amid claims by police that prison staff helped the killer of India's famous bandit queen to escape, officials said Wednesday.

Tihar prison chief Ajay Aggarwal said he had suspended three jail officials - V.D Pushkarna, who is in charge of handing over prisoners for court appearances, his deputy and head warden Ramesh Chand.

Sher Singh Rana, who was awaiting trial for the July 2001 killing of low-caste women's icon Phoolan Devi, walked out Tuesday from crowded Tihar jail with a "police" escort - who turned out to be fellow bandits come to free him.

Tihar jail officials were expecting men from the Delhi Armed Police to come and take Rana away for a court appearance in neighbouring Uttaranchal state. Instead, the bogus police escorts turned up to whisk him away.

"Prima facie the jailbreak at Tihar occurred with the collusion of prison staff," concluded a preliminary report prepared late Tuesday by Delhi's police chief K.K Paul.

Prison head Aggarwal, seething at the daring escape which Indian newspapers Wednesday portrayed as being lifted straight out of a Bollyood movie, laid the blame on the officials rather than the jail system.

"The officials did not read the papers or according to jail norms even check the police identity badge of the fake constable who called himself Arvind Kumar," Aggarwal told reporters.

"We have suspended them for dereliction of duty ... it is not a system failure but an individual's mistake," he added. On average, at least 1,600 inmates travel to and from Tihar to the courts every year, said jail authorities.

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 gang rape by upper-caste Hindus.

The illiterate villager's story - immortalised 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.

India's home ministry, meanwhile, has ordered a magisterial inquiry into the jailbreak to probe how Rana's accomplices got their hands on judicial warrants, police badges and other documents that gave them access to Tihar.

The Indian Express newspaper said the finger of suspicion pointed to Tihar jail staff because Rana's jailbreak relied on precision timing. "The jail officials have a pre-notice on which prisoner has to go, when and to which court and know the actual date and time of the release," said the newspaper.

"Most outstation undertrials are released early in the morning as they travel outside Delhi." Rana was handed over to the bogus police escort at 7:00 am (0130 GMT) - an hour before the genuine Delhi Armed Police patrol showed up at Tihar's gates.

Charles Sobhraj, the infamous serial killer of Western backpackers around Asia who is now jailed in Nepal, escaped from Tihar prison in 1986 by offering his guards cakes laced with sleeping pills.

V.D Pushkarna, who was among those suspended on Tuesday, was also suspended during Sobhraj's jailbreak and reinstated in 1994. -AFP