Kothkai custodial death: Rape accused died due to multiple injuries, doctors tell CBI court

Two doctors on Monday told the special Central Bureau of Investigation court in Chandigarh that the man accused of raping a minor girl in Kothkai in 2017 had died due to “traumatic shock as a result of multiple injuries”, The Indian Express reported. Suraj Singh, the prime accused in the gangrape case, died while in custody at the Kothkai police station in Shimla on July 18, 2017.

Singh was among six men who had allegedly raped and murdered a 16-year-old schoolgirl in Kothkai in Shimla district in July 2017. Nine former police officials, including an inspector general and superintendent of police, have been accused for Singh’s custodial death.

The two doctors were Dr Piyush Kapila, an assistant professor at Shimla’s Indira Gandhi Medical College and All India Institute of Medical Sciences Associate Professor Dr Abhishek Sharma.

During the testimony, Kapila said that the “deceased died as a result of traumatic shock as a result of multiple injuries over the body”. “As per the postmortem conducted by us, we were of the opinion that the collectively described injuries are sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death,” The Indian Express quoted the doctor as saying.

The doctors also ruled out an “accidental fall”, which the accused had claimed was the reason of the injuries, saying that it could not have caused 30 injuries. They said that the injuries on Singh’s body were caused by some blunt hard cylindrical object between two hours to two days before the death occurred, The Times of India reported.

The CBI took over the case on July 21, 2017. On January 10, 2018, it filed an affidavit and a status report in the case, in which it accused the state government of not cooperating in the investigation. The agency had then charged nine suspects in the case.

On May 7 this year, the Supreme Court transferred the case to Chandigarh.