Indian police shoot escaped Islamist prisoners

Indian police gunned down eight Islamists on Monday after they escaped from a high-security jail by slitting the throat of a prison guard and scaling the walls with knotted bedsheets.

Members of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) had staged the breakout from the prison in Bhopal by attacking and murdering the warder with sharpened prison-issue steel kitchen plates in the middle of celebrations to mark the Hindu festival of Diwali.

Police said they were later cornered on the outskirts of the city in the central state of Madhya Pradesh but resisted efforts to take them back into custody and were subsequently shot dead.