Man Serving Death Sentence For Raping, Murdering Minor Kills Self In Pune Jail

A convict serving death sentence in a 2016 case of rape and murder of a minor girl at Kopardi in Maharashtra was found hanging in his cell at the Yerwada Central Jail in Pune on Sunday morning, police said.

Initial findings suggest it to be a case of suicide, they said, adding the convict was undergoing psychiatric treatment.

The man appeared to have used towel strips to hang himself in his cell in the jail, a police official said.

According to the police, a prison guard found him hanging in his cell and alerted the other guards.

The prisoner was taken for a medical examination where he was declared dead, an official from Yerawada police station said.

In 2017, a sessions court in Ahmednagar district sentenced three men to death for the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl in 2016.

The accused had inflicted injuries all over her body and broken her limbs before throttling her, police earlier said.

The incident had triggered widespread protests from the Maratha community, who took out marches across the state over it.