Patna: A “child” prisoner fled the remand home in Jharkhand to celebrate the birthday of his wife, in what police describe as a first-of-its-kind incident.
Police have ordered an inquiry into the age of the child prisoner who, they say, may have been lodged in the remand home on the basis of a fake birth certificate.
Policemen deployed to provide security at a correction home in Gumla district of the state panicked on Wednesday night when they noticed a rope made of bed-sheets hanging from the walls of the jail.
This was followed by extensive searches of the child prisoners lodged in the correctional home, during which one prisoner was found missing.
The missing prisoner, Rahul Lakda, was lodged in ward number three of the facility.
By the time senior police officials rushed to the spot, three hours had been lost.
At around midnight, a team of police conducted raids at the native village of the missing prisoner local at Manjha Tola under Raidih police station in the same district.
Reports said, upon seeing the police approach his residence, the child prisoner hid under a wooden cot but the officers found him.
During interrogation, the prisoner said he had fled the remand home to celebrate the birthday of his wife. However, he could not celebrate her birthday since she was not present in the house.
“When we reached his home, he jumped from the bed and hid under the bed of the dark room but we caught him after extensive searches of the house,” a local police official Rajesh Kumar told the media on Friday.
The prisoner has been sent back to the correction centre and the police have ordered an investigation to verify his age.
“There are many prisoners in the correction centre who are adults but have been staying there on fake age certificates. We are investigating them,” a local deputy superintendent of police Indramani Chaudhary told the media on Friday.
