Prisoners staging a failed escape bid at Srinagar’s highly protected central jail late on Thursday night clashed with jail staff, triggered LPG cylinder blasts, vandalised property and set barracks and a mess on fire before being quelled with tear gas shells and later through negotiations.

The jail, which houses many separatist activists and militants, turned into a battleground when the authorities tried to shift prisoners within the premises after 9pm for repairs and renovation. Sources said this triggered rumours that the prisoners could be shifted out of Kashmir, sparking protests and the violence.

The sources said the prisoners virtually took over the jail and tried to break the main gate open and escape. A large number of security personnel were rushed in. The clashes continued through the night and the situation was brought under control only in the morning, the sources said.

They added that at least two barracks and a mess had been set on fire.

The tension spread outside and forced the authorities to impose restrictions on civilian movements in parts of Srinagar’s old city. Internet services were suspended and Srinagar’s main Jamia mosque was closed before Friday prayers.

Officials said more than 400 inmates from 10 barracks broke the gates open and gathered on the premises. Many of them were separatist activists, including some from the Jamaat-e-Islami, who had been arrested in the recent crackdown.

The prison authorities said the vandalism began after the inmates resisted a move by the jail administration to shift them within the premises for the restoration of the barracks.

The officials refused to explain why prisoners should object to repair work.

Reports claimed that the move triggered rumours of prisoners being shifted to jails outside the Valley.

An official spokesperson said “violence and mob attacks of such a level cannot be condoned”, adding that issues raised by the inmates at a meeting after the vandalism ended were being “looked into”.

Srinagar’s deputy commissioner Shahid Iqbal Chowdhary is conducting a probe. “(Chowdhary) inspected the damage caused to jail infrastructure, apart from ascertaining the sequence of events leading to the incident,” the spokesperson said.

Relatives of several inmates rushed to the jail to enquire about the condition of the prisoners. The families rubbished the jail authorities’ claim that the inmates had resisted restoration work, asking what had prompted the authorities to undertake repairs late in the night instead of during the day.

A woman accused the forces of unleashing atrocities on inmates and said this could have triggered the violence.

The central jail had been in the news last year too, when Pakistani militant Naveed Jutt escaped from a premier hospital in Srinagar where he had been taken for a check-up.

Militants, who seemed to have the prior knowledge of his movements, had attacked the police, killing two constables. The jail superintendent was suspended for negligence.

Jutt and some other militants are suspected to have killed Shujaat Bukhari, the editor of a Srinagar-based English daily.

Top militant ideologues, including Ashiq Hussain Faktoo and Shafi Shariati, who were serving sentences in the central jail, had subsequently been shifted to prisons outside Kashmir.