Karachi: Pakistani security forces have foiled an attempt to breach the Karachi Central Jail through a tunnel, a senior security official on Monday on said.
The militants were aiming to free inmates from the city’s central jail, Colonel Tahir Mahmoud of the Sindh Rangers said.
Col. Mahmoud said the suspects were digging the tunnel from a house near the western wall of the prison.
The scheme was foiled after an intelligence report submitted to the rangers authorities and they raided the house adjacent to the Ghausia Colony. The raid was carried out between the night of October 11 and 12, the colonel said, and several suspects were arrested.
The tunnel was being dug via an underground water tank, which was built to store drinking water for households in the city.
The militants tunnelled 3 metres (10 feet) deeper from the tank and directed the shaft towards the jail.
The colonel said that, through investigations, they came to know that the suspects were planning to take the tunnel up to a dry well inside the jail’s outer wall, where a cell housing some 100 high profile militants was located.
The plot was highly sophisticated, as the militants used various tools including navigational equipment, electric cables, light bulbs, and wooden planks to support the tunnel ceiling.
They had created a 45-metre tunnel, crossing through the outer wall of the jail, and were only 10 metres from the dry well that would have marked the exit.
Colonel Mahmoud said that more arrests had been made after the initial interrogations of the first arrested batch. However, he did not close the number of arrested people or the name of the group.
The digging had been going on for at least four months and the suspects would carry away the excavated clay in the darkness of night.
The suspects had bought the house some five months ago, the colonel said.
Minister for Jails Manzoor Wassan visited the area to examine the tunnel.
An inquiry committee was also constituted under the supervision of the inspector-general of prisons and other senior police officers.
Karachi jail has been under permanent threat, with militants plotting breaches for quite some time to get free dozens of their colleagues.
In view of the break-in attempts and plots, the jail’s outer wall was reinforced with an additional tall thick wall.
Electronic signal jammers were also installed around the jail to prevent detonation of any remote-controlled bombs along the walls of the jail.
