NSW: Gang rapist kills himself in jail a week before sentence

AAP General News (Australia)
04-16-2004
NSW: Gang rapist kills himself in jail a week before sentence

A man, who along with four brothers, gang raped two teenaged girls in a Sydney home
has committed suicide in jail while awaiting sentence.

A Corrective Services spokesman says the man, who can only be referred to as RS has
been found hanging in his prison cell at Long Bay metropolitan medical transit centre
at 8am (AEST) on Wednesday.

The 26-year-old had been in the cell on his own and was found by a prisoner doing the
daily milk run.

The prisoner alerted authorities.

The spokesman says there had been no suggestion RS was a suicide risk.

RS had pleaded not guilty to gang raping the two girls in the home of his friends,
who are brothers, at Ashfield in Sydney's inner-west on July 28, 2002.

But a NSW Supreme Court jury late last year found RS and the four brothers, now aged
between 17 and 26, guilty of pack-raping the girls.

During sentencing submissions RS said he had not told his parents in Nepal that he
was in jail or that he had been charged with gang rape.

The other four men will be sentenced next Thursday. A mandatory coronial inquest will
be held into RS's death.

AAP RTV klw/nf/rh

KEYWORD: GANG (SYDNEY)

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