Police sources said, initial investigations have suggested that the prisoners could have succeeded in fleeing much before Thursday last. It has been revealed that the jail staff had abandoned the exercise of maintaining the daily roll call of the prisoners. ``It seems that for quite some time the roll call had been done away with. This means that the jail staff had no proper information about the inmates,'' a police officer disclosed.

This, according to officials, suggested that the prisoners might have taken advantage of the ``laxity'' of the jail staff and fled even before Thursday. ``What substantiates our doubt is the fact that even on the day on which the jailbreak was stated to have taken place officially, the jail staff had chosen notto inform the Police Control Room (PCR) till the next day,'' an officer said.

Officials alleged that there could have been a serious attempt to cover-up the case and when the situation seemed to be going out of control, the jail staff were forced to make the escape announcement official. ``There is a probability that the escape had taken place some time back and some `insiders' were trying to cover it up,'' a source said.

It has also come to the fore that, of late, the security mechanism inside the jail had become literally dysfunctional and no senior police officer had visited the prison to take stock of the arrangements there. ``It is a fact that the sensitive prison had been ignored and no senior official had visited it. This could have given the Pakistanis a good opportunity to chalk out a plan,'' officials averred.

Intriguingly, the officials had shown laxity despite the fact that a letter recovered from an ISI agent nabbed last year and addressed to Major Irfan - one of the escapees - had statedthat ``all out efforts would be made to free you''.

Meanwhile, the police was carrying out raids and search operations at various places in border areas of Jammu province whom they suspect could make an attempt to cross over to Pakistan. Checking of vehicles along the National Highway has also been intensified to scuttle the other probability of the Pakistanis trying to move towards Kashmir.

IGP, P V Raju reached Jammu and began departmental investigations into the jailbreak incident. He is to submit his report within 10 days. The State government on Sunday had ordered suspension of 11 police officials, including Superintendent of Police, Prisons, in connection with the incident.