Pune: Man serving death sentence in Kopardi rape and murder case found hanging in jail

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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, identified as Jitendra Babulal Shinde (32), was undergoing psychiatric treatment.

The man appeared to have used towel strips to hang himself from an iron bar above the door of his cell in the jail, a police official said.

According to the police, a prison guard found Shinde 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, including Shinde, to death for the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl in Kopardi village of the district in 2016.

The victim, who belonged to the Maratha community, was found murdered after being raped on July 13, 2016 in Kopardi village.

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.

The other two convicts in the case are Santosh Gorakh Bhawal and Nitin Gopinath Bhailume.

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