Fifty criminals have escaped in HP in five years: DGP

Shimla, Sep 7 (UNI) Fifty criminals have escaped from police custody or from various jails of Himachal Pradesh during the past five years, state DGP Ashwani Kumar today said.

''Out of a total of 50 criminals that had escaped from police custody or from various jails in the last five years, the police have managed to re-arrest 20 of them,'' he said at a press conference here.

Admitting that it reflected poorly on the functioning of the police, Mr Kumar said this was due to several constraints under which they were functioning in the state.

He said producing a criminal under judicial custody before a court every 15 days was not just very risky proposition but involved huge losses.

Replying to a question on yesterday's incident in which a convicted inmate, having 19 cases against him in four states, escaped from the police custody, minutes before he was to be produced before the court, he admitted lapses on part of the police, saying efforts were on to arrest him.

The state DGP said the police department has submitted a proposal to the state government for allowing video conferencing of criminals from the jails instead of physically taking them to the courts for trial.

Several other states of Jharkhand, Bihar and Maharashtra have already switched over to this system, whereby cutting on the instances of criminals fleeing from the police custody, he said.

He also announced that DIG PL Thakur has been asked to probe into are the cases of criminals escaping from police custody.

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