NEW DELHI (AP) — Whether he was killed or committed suicide, the jailhouse death Monday of a man on trial for the gang rape and fatal beating of a woman on a New Delhi bus has triggered shock at the enormous security failure at one of India's best-known prisons.
Authorities said Ram Singh, who was accused of driving the bus during the December attack, was in a cell with three other inmates at Tihar Jail when he hanged himself either with his own clothes or a bedsheet about 5:30 a.m.
"This is suicide," Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said.
His family and lawyer alleged foul play.
"There were no circumstances which could have led to Ram Singh committing suicide. There was no mental stress. He was very happy (about the trial's course)," his lawyer V.K. Anand said.
Singh, 33, had been among five defendants facing the death penalty if convicted of the rape attack, which horrified Indians and set off national protests. A sixth accused is being tried and jailed separately because he is a juvenile.
Singh's death in custody raised further questions about a criminal justice system already under attack for failing to protect the nation's women.
"It's a grave incident," said Shinde, the nation's top law enforcement official. "It's a major lapse."
The government had ordered a magistrate's inquiry and would take action after it received the report, he said.
Kiran Bedi, the former director of the jail and now an activist, said prison officials had a moral and legal obligation to ensure Singh's safety, and she expressed surprise that authorities had not been monitoring him with cameras.
"You are duty bound to protect the lives of the prisoners," she said.
Mamta Sharma, chair of India's National Commission for Women, said jail authorities had to explain Singh's death "despite so much protection, so much precaution, so much security."
"This means that even though he was accused of such a heinous crime, the jail administration did not keep a watchful eye on him," she said.
In 2011, 68 inmates in India killed themselves and another eight were killed by fellow inmates, according to India's National Crime Records Bureau. Tihar Jail is badly overcrowded with nearly twice as many prisoners as it was designed to hold. Bedi said that despite that, the treatment of inmates has improved over the past two decades as the jail became more transparent, with volunteers constantly coming in and prisoners better educated about their rights.
Source: The Associated Press, March 11, 2013
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