Newindpress

Mangalore, Jun 11: By the time the personnel at the Kodiyalbail district jail in Mangalore discovered what had happened on the morning of June 26, 1999, one of the most elusive criminals in Karnataka was once again beyond their reach.

In the wee hours, three prisoners had cut the iron bars of their cell and had escaped. The Mangalore jail-break caused a great deal of embarrassment to the prisons department, primarily because it was not the first time that the three men had escaped from custody.

While the notorious counterfeiter Bhaskaran Nair had eluded the police for the better part of the decade, his cell-mate Ashraf had been serving a sentence for jailbreak at the time of the incident.

The third person was Mohandas, who was accused of chain snatching. The trio had managed to smuggle in a hacksaw blade using which they cut away two iron bars on the cell door.

The district police suspected that a rope was thrown into the prison by their accomplices to help them climb the 13-feet wall.

To add to that, the police also claimed to have found a mobile phone charger in their cell, an indication that the escape had been well planned.

Nair had been arrested a year or so before that, but he had set the alarm bells ringing in the state in April 1997 when the Madikeri police had seized a large quantity of fake stamp paper in the town.

Though Nair was known to be a counterfeiter of currency, it turned out that he was also the kingpin of the stamp racket.

It is another matter, however, that a separate seizure of fake stamp papers had been made in Bangalore City the same month but the alleged mastermind behind that case was not to hit the headlines till August 2000.

Investigators, however, say that there was no connection between Nair and the other person, Abdul Kareem Lala Telgi.

Police say that Nair was active in the Mangalore, Coorg and north Kerala region for about two decades before his escape.

Some police officers say that there are at least 1,000 cases against him and that he had evaded arrest on many occasions. One of his addresses on the police records was Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu.

When he escaped in 1999, Nair was around 60 years old. There has been no trace of him since then.