The driver of the bus in which a young Indian woman was gang-raped and fatally injured in December last year hanged himself in his jail cell yesterday, prison authorities said, but his family and lawyer said they suspected “foul play.”
Ram Singh, the main accused in India’s most high-profile criminal case, killed himself just before dawn in a cell he shared with three inmates in New Delhi’s Tihar jail, prison spokesman Sunil Gupta said.
Singh fashioned a noose from threads torn from the mat he slept on and hanged himself from a grille in the ceiling before dawn. While there were closed circuit cameras throughout Tihar, India’s highest-security prison, there were none in individual cells, Gupta said.
Photo: Reuters
Gupta could not say how long it would have taken Singh to make the noose or how he had managed to loop it through the grille, which was 2.3m above the floor. He may have stood on a plastic bucket, Indian media reported.
Singh’s lawyer, V.K. Anand, said his client had been composed and calm when he spoke to him in court on Friday and “didn’t have any complaints.”
Singh, who faced the death penalty if convicted of murder, had not been on suicide watch, Anand and Gupta said.
“I know he had a few complaints of jail authorities torturing him, but nothing that would make him take his own life. We can’t rule out foul play. Nothing is adding up,” Anand said.
Anand has previously always denied that his client was being maltreated in prison. He would not elaborate on the “torture.”
Indian Federal Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde called the incident a “major lapse” in security and said an inquiry had been launched.
Police have described Singh as the ringleader of five men and a juvenile on trial for the Dec. 16 attack on the 23-year-old trainee physiotherapist in the Indian capital. The assault triggered nationwide protests and an intense debate about rampant crime against women in India.
All six accused pleaded not guilty to rape and murder.
The remaining five accused could try to use Singh’s death to their advantage in the trial, Supreme Court lawyer Ravi Kant said.
“The others accused in this case will now take the opportunity to say that Ram Singh was the main conspirator and they were forced into it and as a result they can get lighter punishments,” he said.
Singh’s father cast doubt on the official version of events.
“He confessed about his mistake, then why would he commit suicide? He was prepared for any punishment the government would have given him,” Mange Lal Singh said.
“Ram Singh did not commit suicide, he was murdered. He was first murdered and then his clothes were torn off to hang his corpse in his cell,” he said.
Singh’s mother cried uncontrollably and beat her chest as her husband helped her into an auto rickshaw in the Delhi slum where they live.
“He left me,” she said repeatedly.
The parents were headed to a hospital to see their son’s body.
The trial of the five adult men started last month while the juvenile’s trial began last week.
The attack generated headlines around the world, but the case has since largely disappeared from public view, in large part because authorities have barred reporting on the trial, which resumed in a fast-track court yesterday.
Police allege the six attacked the woman and a male companion on the bus as the couple returned home after watching a movie. The woman was repeatedly raped and tortured with a metal bar. The couple were also severely beaten before being thrown onto a road.
The woman died of internal injuries in hospital two weeks later.
The police report used to charge the accused draws a picture of Ram Singh as the ringleader. On the night of Dec. 16, the accused gathered at his house for dinner, where he came up with the plan of taking the bus out to look for a victim to rape, the report said.
The police say they found him sitting in the blood-stained school bus, wearing a bloodied T-shirt, the morning after the crime. A DNA test revealed that the blood belonged to the rape victim, the report said.
The physiotherapist’s brother said he was “not very thrilled with the news that he killed himself because I wanted him to be hanged ... publicly.”
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique