OSAKA -- The officer on duty in the holding cells at a police station in Tondabayashi, Osaka Prefecture, was watching an "adult program" on their smartphone when rape and robbery suspect Junya Hida escaped this August, the prefectural police told the Mainichi Shimbun.

Hida, 30, escaped from the police station on Aug. 12, and was recaptured some 350 kilometers west on Sept. 29 in western Japan's Yamaguchi Prefecture. He had been posing as a cyclist on a nationwide tour.

Bringing a smartphone into the area with the holding cells is already forbidden under internal rules. Up until now, the Osaka Prefectural Police had only publicly stated that the officer had been watching baseball, news and other such program on a smartphone. Its disclosure of the officer also watching adult content had come only recently.

"Bringing in a smartphone is already a punishable violation, so we judged that there was no need to detail what he was watching," a senior prefectural police officer told the Mainichi.

Prefectural police announced in October it had disciplined seven personnel, including the officer on holding cell duty who was subject to a pay cut.

At that time, the police had explained that the officer watched programs on their smartphone for about 40 minutes from around 9 p.m. on the night Hida escaped. The suspect had met with his lawyer from about 7:30 to 8 p.m. in the Tondabayashi Police Station visiting room, but officers failed to notice the conclusion of the meeting for about one hour and 45 minutes, during which Hida apparently escaped.

(Japanese original by Kentaro Mikami, Osaka City News Department)