Faizan masterminded escape from Tihar: Javed

"I am not the real culprit; Faizan was the mastermind and he had hatched the plan to escape from jail," 18-year-old Javed said three days after his arrest from Uttar Pradesh's Gonda district.

Javed told IANS he first met Faizan on June 25 inside barrack number 5 of ward number 4 in jail number 7.

Faizan, 18, who was lodged in jail on charges of robbery, had escaped from the high security Tihar jail premises with Javed alias Rinku at about 5 a.m. on June 27 but was later held by the Tihar security staff.

"I am not the real culprit. It is true that I escaped from jail, but the mastermind behind the plot was Faizan. He persuaded me to flee from jail the day I met him," Javed told IANS.

Javed was arrested from Gonda district in Uttar Pradesh on June 30 night by a joint team of Delhi Police's Special Cell officials and an officer from Hari Nagar Police station.

Asked why he did it just five days before he was to be released, Javed said: "I knew that I would get released from jail on July 2, but it was tough for me to stay on even for a single day because of the sexual exploitation there."

"As Faizan was very confident and had assured me that he knew the way to escape from jail easily, I agreed. His plan was foolproof. We did it, but our luck ran out and we were caught," Javed said.

Asked about the sexual exploitation he faced, Javed said: "I was sodomised three times within my 25-day stay in jail. I was helpless and did not have the courage to ask the jail authorities for help because the assaulters had threatened to kill me."

"That was the reason I could not bear to pass the five remaining days of my term in jail," Javed said.

A resident of Madanpur Khadar in south Delhi, Javed said that he had shared his ordeal with Faizan who later promised to take him out of jail.

"We fled between 5 a.m. and 5.30 a.m. from jail number 7 when the roll call ended. Faizan climbed on my shoulder and used a gamchha (towel) to hold the iron fencing fixed on the 12-feet wall of the jail.

"Faizan looped his gamchha (towel) on the fence atop the wall, I climbed over his body to scale it. Then Faizan climbed the wall. We jumped from the wall and came on a road. I left my slippers and the gamchha there," Javed said.

Javed said that he and Faizan later scaled the 24-feet wall by using the same process.

"A six-feet high pile of debris near the 24-feet wall also helped us to scale it. We then jumped from that wall. We made a hole in a wall by breaking it with a stone and managed to jump into the drain in the premises of the Tihar jail," he said.

He said that he got stuck in the swamp in the drain and Faizan pulled him out with the help of a bamboo which was lying there.

An officer probing the case, who did not want to be named, said: "Javed is speaking the truth as his version matches with Faizan's statement to the Tihar officials and the police on their modus operandi while fleeing from the jail."

The police officer, however, was circumspect about Javed's allegation of sodomy and said that he might be trying to spin a tale to prove his innocence. In fact, the police have so far not got Javed medically examined to ascertain if he had indeed been sexually assaulted.

(Rajnish Singh can be contacted at rajnish.s@ians.in)