Fourteen juvenile delinquents escape from custody

Fourteen juvenile delinquents ran away from the detention centre in Karnataka’s Dharwad district on Thursday after executing a meticulously scripted Great Escape.

The 50-year-old security guard posted on duty outside the detention centre had no idea what was in store for him when he rushed into the hall on hearing a loud noise accompanied by yelling of the children around 2.30 am in the night.

The moment he unlocked the gates and entered the hall, the lights were switched off. Even before he could realize what was happening, he was covered with a rug and beaten black and blue with clubs and other sharp weapons.

He was overpowered by the inmates of the detention centre and locked up in a room. Out of the twenty juvenile delinquents lodged in the detention centre, a total of fourteen children, aged between 10 and 15 years, made good their escape after immobilizing the security guard Krishna Ramachandra Balke, police said.

Though a police patrol team nabbed three of the juvenile delinquents within three hours of their escape, the remaining eleven are still at large. The patrol team had picked up Rasool, Basavaraj Lakshman and Fakirappa while they were waiting near the bus stand. They were produced before the court and handed over to the Juvenile Home authorities.

The escaped children include Veeresh, Shekar, Baba Hussain, Basavaraj, Mehboob, Moula, Kumaraswamy, Umesh, Chand Peer, Sharanabasappa and Rajashekar. Six of the inmates, who escaped from the detention centre, have a history of petty crimes while three face murder charges.

A special team of policemen has been constituted to hunt the escaped juvenile delinquents, police said.