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Soroor Ahmed in Patna
The 36-hour Chhapra jail revolt ended after Bihar Military Police personnel stormed the prison premises on Saturday afternoon and took into custody the revolting prisoners.
The police had to open several rounds of fire, in which four prisoners were killed and 24 injured. Superintendent of Police, Chappra, Kundan Krishan, was also among the injured, a senior police official said.
The prisoners took control of the jail in the wee hours of Friday, after they beat up jail employees and threw them out.
Earlier reports said that some of prisoners even managed to escape in the melee, but the officials denied it.
Police sources said that the revolt started when the prison staff tried to shift five inmates to Buxar jail, as the Chhapra jail had been witnesses to several ugly clashes between prisoners belonging to Rajput and Yadav castes.
The five who were to be shifted are Shashi Singh, Jhattashankar Singh, Achiabat Singh, Sanjay Rai and Vakil Rai.
According to the prisoners they resisted the move to shift the five prisoners because 'it was done throwing all norms to the wind'.
"Why were we being shifted at the dead of night at about 1:00 am?" asked Shashi Singh.
On Friday Samata Party Member of Parliament Prabhunath Singh tried to broker peace between the rebellious inmates and the police, but failed.
The decision to storm the prison was taken on Saturday after extra police personnel were summoned to break the siege.
According to the minister of state for jail, Ashok Chaudhary, there are over 1200 prisoners lodged in Chhapra jail as against the capacity of just 350 inmates.
This is 26th incident of revolt or jailbreak in the last four years in Bihar.
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