Karnal, May 29: A major instance of police negligence has come to light in Karnal. A criminal, who was captured after being injured during a police encounter, has escaped from the prisoner ward of the Civil Hospital. The accused was arrested by the CIA-1 team on May 25. During the shootout, he sustained gunshot wounds to his leg and near his hip, following which he was admitted to the hospital for treatment.
According to reports, four police personnel had been assigned to guard the criminal. Upon the completion of his treatment, he was scheduled to be produced in court and taken into police remand; however, before that could happen, he escaped from the hospital during the intervening night of May 28 and 29.
It is alleged that, in an attempt to outwit the police, the accused covered himself with a bedsheet and walked out of the hospital. The incident caused a massive stir within the police department as soon as it came to light. The police have seized the hospital's CCTV footage and have initiated an investigation. The fugitive accused has been identified as Gurjit Singh, a resident of Kharar, Punjab.
The police had arrested him in connection with a 23-day-old case involving a firing incident and an attempted robbery at a petrol pump in Taraori. The accused was wanted in connection with five separate petrol pump robbery cases across the Haryana districts of Karnal, Kurukshetra, Sonipat, and Palwal. According to hospital sources, the prisoner ward where the accused was admitted is located on the third floor of the hospital building.
For the past two days, he had been feigning pain—groaning and pretending to be unable to walk or move. However, the doctors were preparing to discharge him soon. The CCTV footage reveals that the hospital's power supply was interrupted around 12:00 AM due to a storm. When the power was restored approximately two to two-and-a-half minutes later, the accused was found missing from his bed. The footage shows police personnel running frantically in various directions in search of him.
In the footage, the accused can be seen walking normally, wrapped in a bedsheet. He did not appear to be injured or limping in any way, whereas during the day, he had portrayed himself as extremely weak and unable to walk.
In the wake of the incident, the most pressing question arising is how the handcuffs on the accused's wrists were ultimately opened. The police had secured the handcuffs to the bed; however, after the accused fled, the handcuffs were found still attached to the bed. Under these circumstances, the fact that he managed to unlock the handcuffs and escape within a mere two minutes raises a host of questions. Currently, the police are conducting continuous raids in search of the accused, and an investigation into the entire matter remains ongoing.