Murder convict escapes from open prison in Maharashtra

A murder case convict has escaped from a prison in Maharashtra's Aurangabad district, police said on Tuesday.

Akalan Risu Bhosale, lodged at the Paithan open jail here, was working in a field when he managed to give police the slip on Monday, police inspector Bhagirath Deshmukh told PTI.

Bhosale was pronounced guilty in a murder case in 2011. He was shifted to the Paithan open jail from a prison in Nashik on June 22 this year, the official said.

"He was working in an onion field in the prison area when he ran away. A case has been registered and search for the prisoner is on," he said.

This year, four prisoners escaped from the jail and the police managed to nab one of them, the official said.

"It is natural to get a thought of running away if a prisoner is in capitivity since a long time," he added.

In an open jail, prisoners serve their sentence with minimal supervision and are often not locked up in their cells. They are at times also permitted to take up employment while serving the sentence.