New Delhi India:- In a huge security lapse, Ram Singh, the main accused in the gang-rape of a medical student in a moving bus in Delhi last December, has committed suicide at Tihar Jail, where he was lodged.
Tihar Jail officials said Ram Singh hanged himself in Jail Number 3, at around 5 this morning. His body has been taken to Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital in the capital.
Ram Singh was the driver of the bus in which six men inflicted horrific assault on 23-year-old student Amanat (Not her real name) in Delhi. Besides Ram Singh, his brother Mukesh and three other men are being tried in the case. The sixth accused is a minor and is being tried separately by the Juvenile Justice Board.
Tihar Jail officials said the five men at Tihar were lodged in isolated cells after other inmates taunted them and also tried to attack them. They were also under a “suicide watch”.
The men are accused of gang-raping and brutally assaulting the student on December 16 last year and then throwing her out of the bus along with a man she was with that evening. The incident sparked outrage in the country and people took to the streets to demand the most stringent punishment for the accused.
The young woman fought a valiant battle for her life in hospital for 13 days, but her injuries were too severe and she died in a Singapore hospital on December 29.
All the accused were arrested within days of the horrific assault and the case was assigned to a fast-track court. It also led the government to draft new and more stringent anti-rape laws.
Ram Singh’s lawyer, VK Anand, had petitioned the Supreme Court in January to shift the case out of Delhi, pleading that his client would not receive a fair trial in Delhi. Mr Anand had sought that the trial be moved to anywhere else in the country except Uttar Pradesh, where the girl came from.
