ROURKELA: Seven juvenile under-trial prisoners (UTPs) escaped from the Observation Home on the Rourkela Special Jail campus, late Monday night. The inmates were facing charges of heinous crimes.Observation Home care-taker PK Nayak said that the inmates fled between 12 am and 1 am by breaking open the window and then scaling the boundary wall. He said two guards present there apprised him of the incident at about 1.15 am. One of the UTPs of Bargaon in Sundargarh district was lodged there for suspected Maoist links, three of them, who belong to Lathikata and Bhubaneswar, were booked for dacoity. Two from Deogarh district were held on charges of rape and one from Sambalpur was booked under the Narcotics and Drugs Prevention Substances (NDPS) Act.Sources said the under-staffed Observation Home has been a detention centre for juvenile law-breakers of 11 districts. Police said in the last one year at least three such incidents have taken place bringing down the number of inmates to 58. The post of the superintendent and two guards have been lying vacant for long.After years of dilly-dallying the district administration initiated action to permanently shift the Observation Home to Bandhposh, on the outskirts of the Rourkela city. It is learnt that the escapee inmates were actually over aged and they got increasingly frustrated due to inordinate delay in theirtrials.Panposh Sub-collector Roopak Patnaik said an inquiry had been ordered and recommendations would be made to the State Government for appropriate action.
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