News East-West Service
NEW DELHI (NEWS): Ram Singh, the prime accused in the Delhi gangrape case, committed suicide in Tihar Jail on Monday morning by hanging himself in his jail cell.
Ram Singh, 33, was the driver of the bus in which Nirbhaya, the 23-year-old medical student, was gangraped by him and his five accomplices and then thrown off the bus on the night of December 16.
The girl died in a Singapore hospital two weeks later. She has just been honoured by the US State Department with the International Women of Courage Award posthumously.
Jail officials said, “Singh was not alone in the cell when he committed suicide. Other inmates were present and a guard was also posted. But nobody came to know about it. Around 5am, he was found hanging.”
Tihar Jail spokesman Sunil Gupta said Ram Singh used threads from his sleeping mat to weave a noose which he used to hang himself from the ceiling even as Ram Singh’s lawyer VK Anand alleged foul play in his client’s death.
Ram Singh’s father also said that his son has not committed suicide.
“I had met him six days back at the court. He had told me that his life is in danger and he also said that he had been sodomised by his fellow inmates,” Mange Lal Singh told TV networks.
Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde called the suicide “a major lapse in security.” He said action will be taken against jail officials if found guilty.
Ram Singh, along with his four accomplices, including his brother Mukesh, Pawan Gupta, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Thakur, was facing trial in a fast-track court in Delhi. He was lodged in Jail No 3.
The sixth accused, a juvenile, has not been named.
Ram Singh and his accomplices were under `suicide watch’ after they stopped interacting with other jail inmates and amongst themselves, jail officials had said in January.
“They just sit and brood,” a jail source had told IANS.
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