Serial rapist-cum-killer Jaishankar’s escape from the Parappana Agrahara jail has added panic to the embarrassment suffered by state police, who now fear that the sex maniac on the loose could target lonely women.
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.
Senior police officers expressed their apprehension that Jaishankar could even be holed up in the state capital, and they have urged working women and those who travel alone at isolated places to be careful.
Jaishankar 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 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 5, 2011. He was subsequently lodged in Parappana Agrahara jail, till he escaped in the early hours of Sunday.
Retired superintendent of the central prison, Lakshminarayana, held senior officers of the jail directly responsible for the escape.
“I had warned them about Jaishankar coming out of his cell too often. The staff neglected my warnings and this led to his escape,” he explained.
