A fake medical emergency, an audacious jailbreak and a 36-hour search operation that ended with 17 prisoners being recaptured.

Those are the highlights of a story from India’s Tamil Nadu state that has captured headlines across the country.

It began on Monday night after 17 men escaped from a prison in Theni district in the southern state after overpowering guards, and ended almost two days later with police catching them in batches.

The incident has drawn attention to overcrowding in Indian prisons. Police say the Theni prison was housing 334 inmates against a capacity of 200, leaving authorities unable to maintain control once chaos broke out.

The state police said it has suspended nine staff at the prison for alleged negligence in connection with the incident.

All the men who escaped were undertrials – inmates on trial or awaiting one – and 18 of them were in one cell at the prison in Thekkampatti in Theni.

On Monday night at 2230 local time (17:00 GMT), one of the prisoners acted like he was going through a seizure. The other cellmates shouted for help and a jail official responded. He was soon overpowered by the prisoners, police said.

The prisoners then got out of the cell, reportedly attacked two other jail guards and took away keys which they used to open the main gate and flee. While 17 escaped, one returned to the prison immediately.

Several prison personnel were injured in the attack.

Police sources told BBC Tamil that they were examining the possibility of collusion between some prison officials and the escaped men.

Sandeep Rathore, Director General of Police for Prisons in Tamil Nadu, said in a press briefing that the jailbreak was caused by “human error”.

“There was a clear breach of security protocol as the prisoners managed to pass through a three-tier barrier manned by security personnel,” he said.

At the time of the incident, only four guards were on duty, far below the staffing required to maintain the prescribed 1:6 guard-to-inmate ratio recommended by the state – which should have worked out to 34 guards against the approved strength of 200 prisoners.

The police then launched a manhunt, calling forces from across the state.

“Advanced technology, drone surveillance, CCTV footage analysis, and the tireless efforts of police personnel played a crucial role,” the department said in a statement on X.

Four men were arrested at a bus station in a nearby village, and the fifth was caught while he was travelling in a tuk-tuk.

A drone search of a forest near the prison led to eight more escaped prisoners being caught. Videos of the arrests showed the men obeying police instructions even as they did not answer questions from reporters who were also seen at the scene.

Two more were captured with the help of drone surveillance, police said, while the last two men surrendered on Wednesday.

News agency PTI reported that all 17 recaptured prisoners have been moved to high-security correctional prisons.

Rathore told media that all prisons across the state would be audited to check if rules were being followed.

The incident evoked memories of one of the biggest jailbreaks in Tamil Nadu in 1995 when 43 suspected militants escaped from a special camp after digging a 153-foot-long tunnel beneath a historic fort. Some of them were never recaptured.

While the investigation is going on, the incident has sparked a conversation on overcrowding in Indian prisons. The National Crime Records Bureau’s last Prison Statistics India report from 2023 showed a national occupancy rate of 120.1%.

Data shows that undertrial prisoners – individuals who are detained while they await police investigation or court trials – make up more than 73% of India’s total prison population. Human rights groups and legal experts have also raised concerns about delays in investigations and trials that lead to people languishing for years behind bars.

Additional reporting by Siraj and Prabhurao Anandhan