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India Rape Suspect

March 11, 2013 by · Comments Off on India Rape Suspect 

India Rape Suspect, The case of a fatal gang rape aboard a bus here last December, which set off an uproar across India, took a surprising turn on Monday when the body of a suspect in the attack was found hanging from a bedsheet noose in his jail cell. Officials called the death a suicide, but the suspect’s family insisted that he had been killed.

The suspect, Ram Singh, was accused of being the driver of the bus in which a 23-year-old woman was beaten and raped. The woman had severe internal injuries from being sexually assaulted with an iron rod. Mr. Singh was found at 5:45 a.m. hanging from a bedsheet rope suspended from a ceiling grill, jail officials said.

An investigation was under way, the officials said.

“It is a major lapse in security — certainly it is not a small incident,” India’s home minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde, said at a news conference in New Delhi.

But Mr. Singh’s family members and his lawyer said that he would not have been able to tie a noose, because his right arm had been seriously damaged in a bus accident. In addition, they said, he shared his cell in the Tihar prison complex with several inmates, making it difficult to believe he could have hanged himself without being noticed.

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