Delhi Gang Rape Accused at Risk in Tihar Jail, Lawyers and Family Say

Adnan Abidi/Reuters Hospital staff and relatives carrying the body of Ram Singh into an ambulance after a post-mortem was conducted at a hospital in New Delhi on March 12.

NEW DELHI â€" Ram Singh, one of the men accused in the Delhi gang rape, was cremated in his family village in Rajasthan two days after he was found hanging in his jail cell on March 11. The body his family received was in horrific condition, family members said in interviews last weekend, making them believe more strongly than ever that he did not commit suicide.

Now, they’re agitating to get the rape case moved from Delhi, because they think Ram’s brother Mukesh, who has also been jailed for the crime, is at risk of being attacked inside Tihar Jail by other inmates or the police.

“We were told that Ram was put in a special cell for protection but despite that he is dead,” said Suresh Singh, 27, a third brother who is not accused of any crime. “We fear that Mukesh will suffer the same fate because everyone inside the jail knows that they were brothers.”

M.L. Sharma, Mukesh Singh’s lawyer, filed a transfer petition in the Indian Supreme Court on March 21 to move the case out of Delhi, which he said is essential for a fair trial and the safety of the accused men. On Friday, Suresh appeared for the second time before Metropolitan Magistrate Hem Raj, who is conducting the judicial inquiry into Mr. Singh’s death, ordered by the Delhi government.

“I told him that we want a CBI inquiry,” he said, referring to the Central Bureau of Investigation.

Mr. Sharma, the lawyer, said “The matter has become too politicized in Delhi for a fair trial and the government wants a conviction at all cost.”

Akshay Thakur, another man accused in the case, testified in court this week that he was receiving death threats from guards inside the jail. On Friday, Vinay Sharma, another accused, appeared in court with what his lawyer said was a fractured hand from a beating in jail.

Five men and one juvenile have been accused of the Dec. 16 gang rape of a 23-year-old woman in a moving bus, which ultimately resulted in her death. The brutal assault on the young student with an iron rod caused an international outrcry and led to nationwide protests demanding justice for the victim. Many, including her devastated father, have demanded the death penalty for the accused men.

Ram Singh was found hanging inside Tihar Jail three months after the attack, a death that officials have ruled a suicide, but that his family and some outsiders believe is suspicious. Mr. Singh had injured both arms in earlier accidents, and was unlikely to be able to fashion a noose or hang himself with it, his family claims. He was in a cell with several inmates, but no one raised an alarm.

“They have killed him even before the judge decided whether he was guilty or not,” said Ram Bai, 65, his mother, speaking over the phone from their ancestral village in Karauli district, Rajasthan.

“We were prepared to accept the decision of the court but where is the justice in killing him in prison” she said.

A key witness to the events of Dec. 16, his death has also raised questions about the government’s ability to guard the accused while the trial is being conducted in a fast track court.

Mr. Singh’s family also said the condition of their son’s body after they received it also raised more questions for the family. On Sunday, Suresh Singh shared photographs of his brother taken before he was cremated in their village on March 13. The photos showed a blood-clotted nose on his blue and bloated face.

In another image, the plastic sheet covering Ram has been lowered to the abdomen to reveal a pink mass of tissues and organs.

“This is what they did to my son,” cried Ram Bai. “Now will they kill Mukesh too

A Delhi-based doctor who viewed the pictures, speaking on condition of anonymity because he said he did not want to get into trouble with the police, said that it appeared the body was not stitched back after the post-mortem.

“Under no circumstances should a body be returned in this state to a family,” he said.

The family believes that moving the case outside of Delhi earlier could have saved Ram’s life. Shortly after the trial started in January, Mr. Sharma had filed a transfer petition in the Supreme Court, which was dropped after another lawyer, V.K. Anand, replaced him as the Singh brothers’ representative. The family has since switched lawyers again, back to Mr. Sharma.

The family said that Mr. Anand did not act on their demand to get the case transferred outside of Delhi.

Mr. Anand, who refutes that such a demand was made, said that there was no basis for getting the case transferred at that time because it was possible to execute a fair trial in Delhi.

“Everything was going fine,” he said. “I don’t know why he committed suicide or what led to his death.”

The lawyer also said that media reports of Ram Singh being beaten inside the jail were not sufficient reason for getting the case moved.

“Everyone knows that is a common practice,” he said.

Prisoners accused of sexual offenses are often targeted by other inmates inside Tihar Jail, where four defendants are still incarcerated.

The family said that Ram Singh, 32, widely regarded as the ringleader, was subjected to sustained abuse since December, and had been forced to drink urine.

“He had also told us not to send any clothes or money because they were taken away by other prisoners and never reached him,” said Suresh.

After Ram Singh’s death, his brother Suresh said that Mukesh had told him about surveillance cameras being installed in his cell, which he shared with another of the accused men, Mr. Thakur, and other inmates. But the family fears that Mukesh Singh will be in danger again when alarm over the suicide fades.

Legal experts said that it can be difficult to get criminal cases transferred because judges prefer to hear the matter close to where the offense is committed. It is also logistically difficult to transport witnesses, they said.

In 2010, however, the Supreme Court transferred the Mirchpur village case, which involved the burning of low-caste Dalit homes by high-caste Jats, from Haryana to Delhi. A 70-year-old Dalit and his handicapped daughter were burned to death in the attack.

Jayshree Satpute, a prominent human rights lawyer, who followed the Mirchpur case, recalled advocates for the Dalits arguing that it was impossible to secure a fair trial in Haryana because Jat police officials were likely to protect members of their own caste. It was also argued that safety of Dalit witnesses could not be guaranteed in Haryana.

Whether the gang rape case qualified for the transfer, Ms. Satpute noted, would depend on whether the Supreme Court thought a fair trial could be delivered in Delhi, and whether the safety of the remaining prisoners could be guaranteed here.

“It’s difficult to get a fair trial in such a high-profile case,” she said. “There is a lot of pressure on the government to bring the culprits to justice.”

“But on the safety issue, proper security measures could have prevented the death in jail,” Ms. Satpute added.

On Sunday afternoon, Amar Singh, Ram Singh’s’s adopted son, watched cartoons in the family’s small house in Delhi.

The five-year-old, who had performed the last rites in his father’s Hindu funeral, which includes piercing the skull of the burning body with a stick, had visited his father in jail a few days before he died.

“I know what’s happened but I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.