Zee Media Bureau
Bangalore: Three days after a 36-year-old prisoner escaped from the central jail on the city`s outskirts, police have not yet managed to catch the serial rapist-cum-killer known as `psycho Shankar`.
The serial rapist`s escape has left Bangalore fuming and scared. Some activists said that women in the city are unsafe till the prisoner is nabbed.
The police have issued red alert to all the police stations across the state, directing them to take possible preventive measures by safeguarding women at lonely and isolated places.
Jaishankar’s crime history reveals that he enjoyed raping and torturing women. He even confessed to torturing women before physically abusing them.
An embarrassed Karnataka government has also announced Rs 5 lakh reward for credible information on tracing the criminal.
Police have launched a massive manhunt to trace the convict across the state and neighbouring states like Tamil Nadu from where he hails, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Maharashtra.
36-year-old Jaishankar has been involved in several criminal cases including rape, murder and kidnapping. He always carried a black hand bag with him. He trapped sex workers near dhabhas on highways, and killed many of them brutally, after having sex with them. Besides, he targeted women in farm houses. He kept a machete in his bag and killed whoever resisted him.
Jaishankar also abducted, raped and killed women in rural areas. As many as 12 cases of rape and murder, and seven rape cases have been lodged against him in Tamil Nadu alone. He had also kidnapped Jayamani, 39, a woman police constable on duty near Perumallur, raped her several times and killed her. Though the incident took place in August of 2009, the police recovered her body only a month later.
It was another month before the Tamil Nadu police arrested Jaishankar in October 2009. He managed to give them the slip on March 17, 2011, as he was being taken to the court.
Jaishankar was rearrested near Jhalki checkpost in Bijapur district on May 05, 2011. He was subsequently lodged in Parappana Agrahara jail, till he escaped in the early hours of Sunday by climbing two 15-feet inner walls and the 30-feet outer wall between 2 and 4 am.
Karnataka`s Inspector General of Prisons (IGP) KV Gagandeep has suspended three wardens, two jailors and six security guards who were on duty then and ordered an inquiry into the daring jailbreak.
The incident came to light when Jaishankar did not turn up for morning roll-call and was found missing from his cell.
The accused used clothes and nylon ropes to climb the walls and also got injured as there were drops of blood outside the outer wall.
According to preliminary investigation, Jaishankar even managed to hoodwink a couple of security guards patrolling between the first and third walls by disguising as a policeman and pretending to be part of the prison staff.
He had a history of escaping from Salem and Coimbatore prisons in Tamil Nadu earlier.
(With IANS inputs)
