Berhampur: Prison is no bar to love. An under trial prisoner escaped from Chhatrapur sub-jail in Ganjam district reportedly to elope with his girlfriend. He, however, returned heartbroken the next day after his lover refused to join him.
The escapee has been identified as 32-year-old Kabiraj Behera. He was arrested in December 2019 in a rape case. He has been lodged in the jail since then.
Sources said Kabiraj scaled the prison walls on Monday night to make his escape. But he returned on his own on Tuesday evening, when he was spotted near the main gate of the sub-jail.
Following the incident, DIG (Prisons) Raghunath Majhi has suspended the chief warder of the sub-jail, Chittaranjan Nayak, for dereliction of duty.
According to reports, a woman had accused Kabiraj of raping her for two years by making false promises to marry her. Later, he got into a relationship with his present girlfriend. Feeling spurned, the earlier woman lodged a police complaint against Kabiraj.
However, the accused and his lover escaped to Kerala. Later, they had a personal dispute and returned to Odisha in December. Informers alerted police about his return and he was arrested.
While lodged in prison, Kabiraj used to send messages to his girlfriend, but she refused to respond. Frustrated over this, Kabiraj decided to escape from prison and meet her. He went ahead with the plan, except that the girl refused to elope with him to another state. Dejected, Kabiraj returned to the sub-jail.
