The probe committee led by senior superintendent of Police at Koshi Zonal Police Office Ramesh Phuyal submitted the report to the Deputy Inspector General (DIG) at Eastern Region Police Office, Parshuram Khatri on Monday.[break]
The report recommended initiation of court cases against 18 policemen including inspector Ishwor Basnet, Sub-Inspector Jit Bahadur KC Khatri, Assistant Sub-Inspectors Saman Shrestha, Ramananda Yadav and Man Bahadur Shrestha.
“The police personnel responsible for the security of the prison neither complained nor followed the due procedure for the jail security. It is obvious that police personnel were involved as they were not found to be discharging assigned duties,” said Phuyal.
The accused police personnel will be tried as per the section 1(a) and (c) of Prison Management Act 2019(BS). As per the Act, in the case of deliberate involvement of police personnel in jail break, they will have to pay fine equal to their offence along with 10 years in prison. If the involvement was inadvertent and incident took place due to mere negligence, the guilty will be subjected to 6 months in prison and Rs 200 fine, or both.
Besides, the probe committee also recommended departmental action against 21 police personnel. The departmental action includes warning, demotion and stoppage of salary. After the incident all 47 police personnel deployed for the jail security were suspended.
However, the report exonerated seven police personnel including five women police. The women police were given clean chit as the incident took place at night and they were responsible for the security of the jail in the day time only.
Earlier, the probe committee under the coordination of the Director General of Department of Prison Management, Shambhu Koiral had also implicated all the security personnel except women officrs and some support staffs. Phuyal probe committee focused mainly on the involvement of the security personnel in the jail break.
On November 9, 12 inmates, including one Bangladeshi and two Indian nationals, broke out of Jhumka after digging a 80-foot long tunnel out of the jail.
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