Red Alert

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BREAK OUT OF INDIA'S MOST INFAMOUS PRISON?

After Black Warrant, the bestselling account of Tihar Jail's most notorious hangings and the hit web series it inspired, former jailer Sunil Gupta returns to tell us about the criminals who got out.

Thirteen life convicts spend weeks digging a 125-foot tunnel beneath the prison and vanish into the night. Charles Sobhraj, serial killer and master manipulator, drugs guards and fellow inmates, takes a hostage and walks out through the formidable jail's gates. Sher Singh Rana, convicted of assassinating Phoolan Devi, the 'bandit queen' turned politician, escapes so brazenly that Tihar is forced to overhaul its security.

Drawing on his decades inside the prison system, Gupta, along with co-author Samanwaya Rautray, reconstructs Tihar's most notorious jailbreaks and the manhunts that followed. Linking every escape are common threads - negligence, corruption, collusion and cracks in an institution that was meant to be impregnable. Tihar, Asia's largest prison, is supposed to be impossible to escape from.

Red Alert tells you how its defences were breached time and again, who looked the other way and why.