No tunnel, no wall-scaling: How a staged seizure broke open Theni sub-jail

Following the jailbreak on Monday night (October 26) in Theni district, police have confirmed that 13 of the accused have been caught so far. Theni police said they used drone surveillance to track down the escaped prisoners. The search is on for the four others who remain at large. “The drone-assisted operation helped the police identify and apprehend the escaped accused,” said South Zone IG Vijayendra Bidari.

The arrested are: Karuppasamy @ Madhan, Dharunkumar, Rajkumar, Pandiselvam, Sabarinathan, Nisanth, Muthu Ilangovan, Karthik Raja, Prasanth @ Linga Prasanth, Raja Sinkanthar, Silambarasan, Soalimugileswaran, and Praveenkumar.

The escape, however, began hours earlier with a calculated act of deception inside the jail.

The escape plan

In the still hours of Monday night (October 26), deep in the foothills between Theni and Andipatti, a sub-jail meant to hold men awaiting trial became the stage for a carefully orchestrated deception. Around 10.30 pm, inside an overcrowded cell of the Thekkampatti sub-jail, a prisoner named Muthu Ilango began thrashing and shouting as if he was having an epileptic seizure. Fellow inmates raised the alarm, their voices rising in what sounded like panic. The performance was convincing enough that the night staff believed a medical emergency was unfolding.

Two warders, Stalin and Thangapandi, opened the cell door and stepped inside to help. The moment the lock clicked open, the pretence ended. The men inside, armed with spoons, knives and whatever else they could grab, surged forward. They attacked the two officers, covered them with bedsheets, snatched the keys, and locked them inside the very cell they had just entered.

Also read: Theni jailbreak: 4 of 17 inmates who escaped captured; manhunt on for others

Outside, more staff were overpowered. One guard, identified in local accounts as Madhan Mohan, had a one-and-a-half-sovereign gold chain torn from his neck. Grade-II constable Thangapandi suffered serious head injuries and was later rushed to hospital, with two others sustaining lesser wounds.

A simple escape

With the keys in hand and the immediate resistance broken, seventeen undertrial prisoners walked out through the main gate of the facility. No tunnel. No wall-scaling, the classic move in larger prisons. In this relatively small sub-jail, the simplest route proved sufficient once the human barrier had been collapsed by the “epilepsy drama.” South Zone IG Vijayendra Bidari later used exactly those words to describe the ruse.

The jail itself sits on roughly 10 acres at the base of the hills, a few kilometres from the Theni Government Medical College Hospital road. Its four blocks were designed, according to local reports, to hold around 200 remand prisoners. On the night of the break, more than 330 men were reportedly inside. Night duty was supposed to involve eight guards, but only four were reportedly present. Whether those numbers hold up under formal inquiry remains to be confirmed, but they have already become central to the questions now swirling around the incident.

Manhunt begins

By dawn on Tuesday (October 27), police had captured five escapees: Praveen Kumar of Perungudi in Madurai, caught hiding in the nearby forest; Silambarasan of Devaram in Theni; and Rajkumar and Raja Sikandar, both from Madurai. The remaining twelve men scattered. Roughly three hundred officers, more than seventeen specialised teams, drones, sniffer dogs and vehicle checkpoints fanned out across Theni district, neighbouring areas and the Tamil Nadu–Kerala border. Forests around the jail were searched intensively; an auto driver named Chinna Kalai later told investigators he had given a lift to one of the fugitives without realising who he was, and had been forced to drop him near the jail gate after police stopped the vehicle.

Prisons DGP Sandeep Rai Rathore flew from Chennai to Madurai and went straight to the jail. He described a clear breach of protocol: the prisoners had passed through a three-tier security barrier that should have been manned. He suspended nine staff members, two head warders, one first-level warder and six second-level warders for dereliction of duty and ordered a detailed probe.

Also read: Tamil Nadu crime rate back in focus as toddler raped, killed in Tiruvallur

Police cases were registered at Kadamanoor police station under sections covering attempt to murder, chain snatching, assault with weapons and related offences. Photographs and residential details of the absconders were circulated.

Political fallout

The political fallout was immediate. Opposition parties, including the DMK and AIADMK, seized on the escape to accuse the TVK government and Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay of failing to maintain basic law and order, noting that the jail portfolio sits with the Chief Minister. Questions about overcrowding, understaffing at night, and the vulnerability of small sub-jails to simple deception now sit alongside the manhunt itself.

DMK president and former chief minister M K Stalin launched the most pointed attack, drawing a cinematic parallel. “Following Breaking Bad, Prison Break has now begun in Tamil Nadu too,” he said. “I thought the government was only failing to monitor criminals released on bail. But the state of affairs is such that even prisoners inside jails are being allowed to escape.”

He linked the Theni breakout to the recent escape of two prisoners from Puzhal Central Prison, noting that this was reportedly the first time so many inmates had fled at once since 1995. “Such an incident in 2026, when security arrangements and surveillance facilities are supposed to have advanced, is unacceptable. Criminals outside are committing crimes freely. Prisoners inside are escaping fearlessly. Overall, the TVK government is a bunch of incompetent, good-for-nothing people. They are not going to protect the people. Tamil Nadu has reached a pathetic state where people have to protect themselves.”

Opposition’s attack

DMK MP Kanimozhi echoed the criticism, questioning how a government that could neither arrest criminals nor keep them securely inside jails could claim to protect the public.

PMK leader Dr. Anbumani Ramadoss called the incident shocking and a clear failure of the prisons department. He specifically condemned the fact that prisoners held under the POCSO Act and the Goondas Act had been able to escape after attacking staff. “Scenes of prisoners escaping from jail, which were previously seen only in films, are now becoming a reality. This reflects the weakening of the police and prisons administration,” he said. He pointed to the gap between the reported time of the escape and when police were informed, noted that more than 12 hours later only four had been arrested, and demanded the immediate recapture of all escapees, an investigation into whether the break was pre-planned, and action against negligent officials.

Also read: TN suitcase murder: How cops caught couple in Manipur after 24-day manhunt

AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami expressed shock and turned the focus on Chief Minister Vijay, who holds the jail portfolio. “The escape of 17 prisoners from Theni district jail is shocking. You went for inspection at Puzhal jail, Chief Minister was that an inspection or some kind of astrological remedy? When prisoners escaped from Puzhal, the security of other jails should have been strengthened. Does the minister not have time to ensure prison security?”

DMK’s legal wing deputy secretary Baranthaman went further, claiming that 50 prisoners had escaped under TVK rule so far, asserting there was no security for the public or police, and describing the Theni incident as the first of its scale since 1995.