Rampaging Sabarmati inmates injure 12 staff

The standoff between the Sabarmati Jail inmates and the prison staff escalated into a bloody confrontation on Saturday, with 12 jail officials sustaining serious injuries after being attacked with barbed wires by over 50 inmates.

The attackers included some of those accused in the Ahmedabad blasts case. Twenty prisoners were also injured in the battle, which was set off when the staff tried to prevent the inmates who were on a hunger strike from forcing others to refuse food. The prisoners broke CCTV cameras, jammers, fans, pots and tiles, and used the shards of the debris to attack the authorities.

Some prisoners in the jail have been on an indefinite hunger strike since March 25 to protest against the alleged inhuman treatment meted out to them. The IGP of prisons, Keshav Kumar, was not available for comment. “The attack was intense and some of the officials were severely injured,” said a source apprised of the incident’s scale. Of the 56 prisoners involved in the attack, seven are accused in the Ahmedabad blasts case.

They include Rafiyuddin Kapadia, Imran Sheikh, Yunus Mansoori, Usman Agarbattiwala, Abbas Umer Sameja, Shamsuddin Sheikh, Qayamuddin Kapadia and Javed Siddiqui.