GUJRAT, Aug 3: Senior officials in police and prison departments question recent postings following the Sialkot jail tragedy.

According to them, an official who has replaced the suspended Sialkot Jail superintendent is the one under whose tenure as the Mandi Bahauddin jail chief 11 prisoners armed with pistols and hand grenades had escaped in October, 2001, after taking an assistant superintendent hostage.

The fugitives, some of them caught later, were involved in several cases of murder, kidnapping, dacoity and highway robberies.

Later, 13 jail employees were suspended while the jail superintendent, Malik Shaukat Feroz, escaped departmental action because he was on leave. However, the Punjab government did transfer the then IGP prisons, Brig Tauqir Qamar.

Informed sources told Dawn that a team which probed the Mandi Bahauddin jailbreak had held Mr Feroz guilty of poor administration.

Some of the re-arrested fugitives had told the inquiry team that inhuman conduct of the superintendent and other jail staff had forced them to escape.

Similarly, Mr Nisar Saroya who is now the Sialkot DPO was penalized (made an OSD) last year in September when a Gujrat police party was caught in Naushera (NWFP) with illegal arms. (Saroya was the Gujrat SSP then).

An inquiry later confirmed allegations that the arms had been smuggled from the tribal area to implicate innocent people and show recoveries.