Nearly 300 communist rebel supporters escaped from an understaffed jail in eastern India in a dramatic mass breakout on Sunday, police said.
Some 299 prisoners fled the jail in Chhattisgarh, a hotbed of Maoist insurgency, after overpowering their guards during a meal.
"It was a premeditated conspiracy," local police official Rahul Sharma told AFP by telephone from Dantewada town.
More than half of the jail’s 377 inmates escaped, Sharma said, describing many of the fugitives as sympathisers of the Maoist rebels.
"The jail is housing all Naxal supporters," said Sharma, referring to the rebels as they are known locally, but added that there were "no hardcore Maoists" in the prison.
Earlier Sharma told the NDTV news channel that the prisoners had overpowered the six guards on duty and seized their weapons before fleeing under cover of gunfire.
Three people were injured in the breakout, Sharma told AFP, including two guards and a prisoner. Earlier NDTV reported five people were injured.
The police official said police reinforcements had reached the jail on the outskirts of Dantewada town, south of the state capital Raipur, and were searching for the escapees.
Sharma called for more security at the jail, saying it was in a high-risk area.
"Ideally it should be a maximum security jail," he said. "There’s a resource crunch everywhere in the district."
The prison had a third as many guards on its staff as it needed, he added, saying the jail required at least 120 security personnel.
In a similar incident two years ago, Maoist rebels sprung some 200 people free from a prison in eastern Bihar state during assembly polls there after exchanging gunfire with police for two hours.
The Maoist insurgency, which grew out of a peasant uprising in eastern India in 1967, threatens huge swathes of India’s centre, east and south and has spread to half of India’s 29 states.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described it as the single biggest threat to India’s internal security.
The Maoists say they are fighting for the rights of neglected tribal people and landless farmers.