'Suicide attempt by Nirbhaya rape convict raises questions about jail security drills'

Mumbai: Social activist and eminent lawyer, Abha Singh on Thursday blamed the judiciary for not providing adequate security drills to prevent Vinay Kumar, one of the accused in the Nirbhaya case, from attempting suicide in the Tihar jail.

"It shows that justice was delayed for so long that the accused had been harassed and bullied in the prison. Not only that, security is not in the right sense, that is why they are being beaten up. It is necessary that any person who is in jail is provided due security, but, nonetheless, this suicide attempt raises a question on the judiciary of this country that why are the cases geting delayed," said Singh.

Singh stressed that a proper time frame should be allotted to the Nirbhaya case so that justice is delivered to the victims in a timely manner.

"It is necessary that a timeframe of all appeal cases from the high court and the supreme court should be made maximum three months, because there are appeals in death penalty in SC for 10 years to 15 years. This very fact defeats the purpose. Hence it is necessary that the Nirbhaya case gets decided as fast as possible and a special bench be created if the judiciary says that it is overburdened with cases," she said.

Former National Commission for Women (NCW) member Barkha Shukla Singh criticised Vinay for attempting suicide, saying that feeling guilty about the act now does not give space to commit suicide.

"I am not surprised by this act at all. He might have felt guilty because of the kind of crime he committed. But that doesn`t give space to commit suicide. He must undergo the punishment he was sentenced to," Singh told ANI.

She, however, said there should be an investigation to find out whether anyone conspired or the accused attempted to committ suicide out of guilt.

Sharma, one of the five convicts sentenced to death for the rape and murder of Nirbhaya in a moving bus in Delhi in December 2012, committed suicide by hanging himself last night in Tihar Jail.

He has been admitted to the Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital, where his condition is said to be critical.He is not the first convict in the case to have attempted suicide. 

Ram Singh, the driver of the bus in which the student was brutally raped and tortured by six men, was found hanging in his cell in Tihar in 2013While jail authorities said, he had committed suicide, his family alleged that he had been murdered.