RAIPUR, Dec 16: 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.—AFP