By IANS
Kathmandu : Death has released a 22-year-old Indian from a draconian sentence in a Nepal jail. His life imprisonment term had begun when he was only 17.
Ramesh Kumar Singh, whose home was in Chhapra district of India's Bihar state, died Saturday night at the Janakpur Zonal Hospital in southern Nepal of an illness that doctors were unable to diagnose.
Singh, according to Nepal's official media, was serving life imprisonment in the Jaleshwor prison in Mahottari district for rape and murder. According to Nepal's laws, a life term means 20 years behind bars.
Nepal's state media said Singh had been sentenced by the Dhanusha district court five years ago. At that time, he would have been 17.
Though international child rights laws regard anyone under 18 to be a minor, in Nepal, a youth above 16 is an adult and is no longer eligible to be tried under the juvenile justice system.
However, questions still remain about the time of his arrest – whether he was arrested when he was under 16 – and whether it was a miscarriage of justice to sentence such a young boy.
People from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh who face criminal charges in Nepal often come from poor families with very low literacy levels.
Many are unable to defend themselves in a country that was recently described as having one of the most corrupt judicial systems by an international organisation.
On Saturday morning, Singh was reportedly found to be very ill, shivering and salivating. He was taken to the zonal hospital where he died around 9.30 p.m.
The jailer was reported as saying an autopsy would be conducted to find the cause of death.