A massive manhunt is underway for recapture of notorious Mexican drug cartel boss Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, who fled a maximum-security prison for a second time by fleeing through a 1.5 km long tunnel tailor-made for his escape.
Mexico Attorney General on Monday declared a reward worth 60 million pesos ($3.8m) for anyone bringing information leading to his arrest.
Earlier, Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong visited the Altiplano jail and sacked the prison director along with two other officials, saying the jail officials might have helped El Chapo escape.
It is not the first time, El Chapo has managed to escape. Last time in 2001, the boss of Sinaloa cartel, had bribed officials and made his way out of a high-security jail in Mexico, Puente Grande, by hiding in a laundry cart.
After that, it took Mexican authorities 13 long years to recapture him and he wqas arrested in Feb 2014 when he was relaxing at a beach in his home state of Sinaloa.
Mexico has ratcheted up security across the country and checkpoints have been set up. Also, security has been beefed up at Mexico’s airports to check El Chapo’s escape out of the country.
El Chapo, also known as Shorty, this time walked out of jail in what appeared to be a pre-planned sophisticated escape as the tunnel that facilitated his escape was fitted with lights and ventilation.
The video footage shows that Huzman was last seen at around 9 pm on Saturday when he entered his shower area. Investigators later found a 20-by-20-inch wde and 10 meters long hole near his shower that led into a 1.7 kilometer long tunnel through which El Chapo successfully escaped.
According to a local Mexican news daily, the tunnel that connected El Chapo’s shower to a house in the nearby neighborhood, must have taken almost a year to be built. Also, according to the calculations, the 1.7 km tunnel consumed 2,000 cubic meters of soil which had to be cleared and transported in approximately 300 dump trucks, reports Mexico News Daily.
The cost of the construction of the sophisticated tunnel is pegged at a whopping 1.5 million pesos.
