The authorities in Indian-administered Kashmir have sacked three prison officials and two policemen after a prominent Muslim militant escaped from their custody.

The escaped man, Ghulam Rasool Shah, who uses the alias General Abdullah, slipped from police custody while he was being taken to a hospital for medical treatment on Wednesday.

Mr Abdullah was the chief of the militant Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen group, and was one of the more than thirty jailed Muslim militants whose release had been initially demanded by the hijackers of an Indian Airlines plane on Christmas eve.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service