Two Indian prisoners dig tunnel to escape jail

New Delhi

Two prisoners escaped from India's most secure jail in New Delhi by digging a tunnel under a wall and scaling another in a daring dash for freedom, an official and media reports said today.

The pair escaped on the weekend from Tihar jail, Asia's largest, in what appeared to be a carefully prepared prison break that authorities are still piecing together.

One of the two, identified only as Faizan and Javed, who had been awaiting trial on burglary charges, was recaptured yesterday and was being questioned.

"They escaped sometime on Saturday or Sunday. We will find out how they managed to escape. It is too early to say how and when they staged the jail break," Tihar deputy inspector general Mukesh Prasad said.

Prison guards raised the alarm yesterday when they failed to show up for roll call. The pair had scaled a wall from one compound into another before digging under the perimeter wall and crawling through a drain local media said.

The jail houses top militants, mafia, other gangsters and hardened criminals. But the prison is hugely overcrowded with more than 13,500 inmates at the end of 2013 despite a maximum capacity of just 6,250.