India inmates kill guard and escape jail
Eight prisoners have escaped from a jail in the central Indian city of Bhopal after killing a guard and scaling the wall using bed sheets.
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Police say the men, reportedly activists of an outlawed Islamist group, slit the guard's throat.
The police have launched an operation to hunt down the fugitives.
Last year two prisoners escaped from India's maximum security Tihar jail in Delhi by digging a tunnel under a wall and scaling another.
Senior police official Bhopal Rama Singh told the Press Trust of India agency that the eight men escaped from the main prison in Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh state early on Monday.
He said the men belonged to the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (Simi), a group that has been linked to a series of bomb blasts in the past.
The Indian government blamed the group for blasts in Mumbai in 2003 in which at least 50 people were killed, but Simi has denied the allegations.
In 2013, seven inmates, including six members of the Simi, escaped from a prison in Madhya Pradesh after breaking through a toilet wall.
One of the prisoners was later apprehended near the jail in Khandwa district.
