The incident in which Sapana Tamang, who is serving a life sentence, managed to escape from the Central Jail, which has 24-hour police security, has raised questions about the security management there. The Valley Police Office, Ranipokhari, is preparing to form a committee to investigate the matter.
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At 2:30 pm on Monday, a young woman was being held in the case branch of the Valley Crime Investigation Office, Teku. The police had put a jacket with the word "detainee" on her black and white floral kurta. According to police records, this is not the first time Sapna Tamang has been handcuffed. "Who would think that she was caught for a serious crime at first glance?" asks the office's head, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Santosh Khadka.
Age 25, prison sentence 25 years. The crimes are murder, kidnapping, robbery/theft. If the office building had not been burned during the Gen-G movement, she would have been in a nearby detention cell. After the office was destroyed, she has been kept in the office that was moved to a nearby building under construction. Until 72 hours ago, she was serving a life sentence in the Sundhara Central Jail. Meanwhile, an incident occurred in the prison, which has added another case to her criminal record system.
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On 20 Mangsir 2077, 6-year-old Sumina Tamang of Faligang, Kalika Rural Municipality-1, Rasuwa was returning home from the local Grang Primary School. She was wearing a gold earring, and the eyes of Sapna, who has been involved in thefts, fell on her ears. According to the officer involved in the investigation at that time, she tried to escape by pulling the earring, and was confused for some time. Sumina clearly recognized her. ‘The girl recognized her and thought she would be arrested, so she kidnapped her,’ the officer said, ‘later she killed her and took her to the cave of Nagurdung Bhir in Kalika Rural Municipality-1, Palep and covered her with a rope.’
She had already been arrested three times for theft before that. In the theft case, she was initially released after making a settlement as a minor after returning the goods.
After being repeatedly arrested on similar charges, she also spent a year in a juvenile correctional home in Bhaktapur. She was 18 years old when she was released. She was arrested on charges of murdering a 6-year-old girl before she turned 19. She was detained in Rasuwa Prison for retrial and was transferred to the women's block of the central prison on 6 Baisakh 2077. She escaped with other prisoners on 24 Bhadau due to the situation that arose after the Gen-G movement. About 2 months later, the police arrested her from Dhunche in Rasuwa. A team from the District Police Office, Rasuwa, which arrived after receiving information that she was hiding by breaking the door of a house in the village, arrested her and sent her to Kathmandu. The police considered it normal because all the prisoners escaped in the Gen-G movement. However, she had already started planning a 'jail break' as soon as she was released from prison for the second time.
Love that broke out inside the prison
In the eyes of the law, Sapna was guilty of a serious crime. In terms of love, she could not remain a prisoner. She did not think of escaping. She worked in an industry inside the prison, earning a little money. However, when she fell in love with Samir Shrestha, the son of Sita Thapa Shrestha, who was working in the same industry and came to visit the mastermind of the bomb blast incident, Sita Thapa Shrestha, then her goal changed. Samir's mother was the ringleader of the pressure cooker bomb blast that took place in a church in Kathmandu's Dhobighat on 9 Jestha 2066, killing three Indian citizens and injuring 13 others.
Earlier, Samir used to go to the prison to deliver food to his mother. Later, she started delivering raw materials to the pottery factory inside the prison. Sapna's meetings with Sameer, who worked there, began to increase. 'We used to talk regularly in prison, it was fun,' she told the investigation officer, 'but, after the Gen-G movement, our love grew.'
She also said that she escaped at around 1 am on 3rd Jestha by making a ladder out of six vegetable crates. Then, she jumped over the barbed wire and threw herself from a 9-foot wall. The serious thing is that she escaped in the middle of the night, but the prison administration only came to know about the incident during the regular count the next day. ‘There are 350 women prisoners, they were not found in the morning,’ says jailer Krishna Chapagain, ‘as soon as we found out in the evening, the police started searching.’
According to the police, as soon as they received information that a young woman had escaped from the prison, they made a list of possible places where she could go and started searching. The police had come to know that Sameer had been coming to meet her inside the prison. According to Pillar-4 DSP Anil Ghimire, who investigates heinous crimes in the office, the police’s suspicions grew stronger when she was not found at home. Finally, on the morning of 4th Jestha, she was arrested from Sameer’s room in Asan. When the police arrived, she told them, ‘I had planned to escape from the prison with another foreign friend.’ However, after he betrayed me, I ran away alone.’ The foreigner, however, has not admitted that she had planned to escape. ‘If I had been in jail, I would have been 50 years old when I got out,’ she told the police, ‘The punishment was heavy, so I thought I had to escape anyway.’
The police have also arrested Shrestha on charges of helping her escape. She, on the other hand, has said that they became close after the Gen-G movement. The officers investigating Sapna’s relationship and the jail break call Sameer a fool. ‘He was looking for work with the girl who escaped from jail, what can you say about such a person without calling him a fool?’ The investigating officer commented, ‘It has been revealed from the investigation that we have visited the job-finding offices in Satdobato and Khumaltar areas of Lalitpur.’
The fact that Sapna managed to escape at night from the prison, which is under 24-hour police security, has also raised questions about the security management of the police. The Valley Police Office, Ranipokhari, is preparing to form a committee to investigate the matter.
