By IANS
Lucknow : Two jailors were killed when prisoners attacked them with rods, bricks and belts during a raid to search for mobiles and other prohibited goods at a district jail in Uttar Pradesh Monday. A prisoner died in police firing to control the violence.
The violence at the district jail in Sultanpur, about 140 km from here, resulted in one jail security personnel being bludgeoned to death, while another succumbed to injuries in hospital.
The jail superintendent who had assumed charged only a few weeks back, was also injured as well as two other personnel.
The raid was part of a statewide crackdown by the authorities to trace prohibited goods and materials inside the prison cells. The raids were ordered by the Mayawati government in the wake of reports that the Uttar Pradesh prisons had become a haven for criminals.
According to state home secretary Javeed Ahmad: "Trouble was incited by a notorious gangster lodged in the jail for the past several months. It was this gangster who, on one hand spread the word about the presence of a couple of mobile phones in a particular barrack, and on the other provoked inmates to launch an attack on the jail authorities."
Consequently, no sooner did the security personnel entered the barrack, they were attacked with anything that the inmates could lay their hands on.
Pitched battles continued between the two sides for more than an hour until armed policemen arrived and brought the situation under control. "The cops had to open fire to contain the violence in which one jail inmate died," said the home secretary.