Poor security led to violence in Madurai prison

By Our Staff Reporter

MADURAI, JULY 1. Inadequate security and lack of coordination among the police led to mob violence and lathicharge against DMK remand prisoners and mediapersons on the premises of the Madurai Central Prison in the wee hours of Sunday.

The incident, in which mediapersons sustained bleeding injuries, took place when the DMK cadres, who were waiting to be remanded, damaged scores of buses and clashed with the police who escorted the Chennai Mayor, Mr. M. K. Stalin, in the front arena of the prison. The police from Chennai, while chasing away the mob, attacked the scribes with their rifles reversed. They also threatened to open fire at the cadres and the mediapersons.

The situation in New Jail Road, where the prison is located in the city, had remained volatile since Saturday morning. Thousands of DMK cadres and frontline leaders, who were taken into preventive custody from the southern districts of Madurai, Ramanathapuram, Sivagangai, Theni, Dindigul and Virudhunagar, were brought there for a 15-day remand period.

The sudden rush of remand prisoners, including many former VIPs on a single day, put the prison authorities under a severe stress. A prison official said the police made indiscriminate arrests in districts and brought all of them to the Madurai Central Prison, which was already full. It now had to accommodate an additional 3,000 men as remand prisoners against the original capacity of 2,000.

Even as the officials struggled to fulfil the mandatory obligations stipulated in the Prison Manual while remanding every DMK cadre in time, the crowd, swelled to a few hundreds on the front campus. as there was no place to sit and escape the hot sun, the crowd spilled on the New Jail Road and started occupying every bit of available place. The cadres also became restive as many of them had to wait without food and water for nearly six hours. They demanded that the police officials either remand them inside the prison or allow them to go home.

Meanwhile, hundreds of men who were brought from a neighbouring district, started attacking vehicles on the road. The windowpanes of six buses of the State Road Transport Corporation, which ferried them to the prison, were damaged in stone throwing. They also uprooted poles and ornamental lamps from a park set up opposite the prison. The entire road was strewn with broken glass pieces.

The token presence of the local police allowed the DMK cadres to resort to sporadic violence. A strike force, deployed earlier, was also withdrawn before the convoy of Mr. Stalin reached the prison premises. A small checkpost at the northern end of the road and a traffic constable on the southern side, failed to contain the mob violence. As the police continued to swoop down on the DMK men today, the Madurai prison authorities asked the Government to send the cadres to other prisons.

The city police, according to the sources, also took exception to the way the police from Chennai conducted themselves on the prison premises. ``It is a suo motu decision of the Chennai police,'' claimed a senior police official, referring to the lathicharge. They decided to submit a report on the incidents to the higher-ups.

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Section  : Southern States
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