Red Alert

Tales of Escape from Tihar

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What happens when a jailer becomes the witness to the country’s most explosive secrets?
In Red Alert, Tihar’s long-serving superintendent Sunil Gupta returns with another unflinching look into the underbelly of India’s prisons — this time from the frontlines of riots, lockdowns, jailbreaks, and death sentences that shook the nation.
Do jailbirds ever stop dreaming of freedom? Of course not, says Gupta, who spent a lifetime guarding those condemned to stay within Tihar’s towering walls. Only the desperate dare to flee — like Charles Sobhraj, who walked out days before his release to dodge a foreign noose, and Sher Singh Rana, Phoolan Devi’s killer, who escaped to Afghanistan on a self-proclaimed royal mission.
From terror convicts who turned poets to guards who lost their sanity on duty, from mysterious deaths to audacious breakouts — Gupta reveals what the red alert siren inside Tihar really means. Red Alert goes beyond the black warrants — into the moments when the system itself is on trial, and freedom becomes the most dangerous dream of all.
A rare insider’s chronicle of power, crime, and survival within India’s largest prison, Red Alert exposes the cracks in the walls meant to contain others — and shows us what freedom, punishment, and humanity really mean.