Two prisoners escaped from the Warangal Central Prison in Telangana on Saturday, police said. Sainik Singh and Rajesh Yadav, who were both serving rigorous imprisonments, staged a jailbreak using bedsheets as ropes.

Singh, who comes from Uttar Pradesh, and Yadav, who hails from Bihar, were brought to the Warangal jail on September 10 on administrative grounds. They escaped between 2 am and 3 am on Saturday. Singh was convicted for stealing a weapon, while Yadav was convicted for murder. They were both kept in a high-security cell.

Jail Superintendent K Newton told The Hindu that the men had broken the lock and escaped. There are no CCTV cameras in the prison, and those installed do not work, he added. Newton, however, claimed he was clueless about how they escaped because a live wire runs around the prison wall.

The city police are on the lookout for the fugitives.

Their escape comes amid an ongoing investigation into an encounter in Madhya Pradesh, in which eight Students Islamic Movement of India undertrials were killed after escaping from the Bhopal Central Jail, on October 31. Preliminary investigations had pointed to the role of insiders in the incident. The eight SIMI members had also used bedsheets to scale the walls of the jail.