Shillong, Aug. 19: The Steering Committee against Murder of Democracy, a conglomeration of nearly 20 NGOs formed to speed up the judicial probe into the 2009 Shillong jailbreak, today set a 14-day deadline for the state government to appoint a new judge to probe the jailbreak.

A member of the committee and the general secretary of KSU, Hamlet Dohling, said there was undue delay on the part of the state government to appoint a new judge to complete the judicial inquiry into the jailbreak after the former judge left the job midway and went to Assam on a new assignment.

Seven undertrial prisoners, led by hardcore criminal Full Moon Dhar, escaped from Shillong Jail on May 31 last year.

Police shot dead Dhar the next day and other six undertrials were re-captured. However, two of the re-captured undertrials accused the police of killing Dhar in a fake encounter.

There were also allegations of a politician-criminal nexus, which resulted in the jailbreak.

The committee had launched an agitation after the incident, compelling the state government to institute a magisterial probe besides police investigations into the matter.

Under more pressure, the government in October instituted a judicial probe into the jailbreak headed by retired judge, Justice D. Biswas.

The terms of reference of Biwas’s inquiry commission were to go into the details of the jailbreak.

But the judge could not complete the probe as he took up the official assignment in Assam on April 20 .

The KSU leader said the two weeks’ deadline to appoint a new judge would start from tomorrow.