HYDERABAD, 25 December — Lt. Commodore Raj Kumar, one of the main accused in the espionage case that shook the Eastern Naval Command in the port city of Visakhapatnam recently, committed suicide in the Vizag Central Prison on Sunday.
According to Vizag City police, the 52-year-old official hanged himself with bedsheet tied to iron bars of a window in the bathroom near his cell in the central prison. His body was found hanging by a sentry who broke open the door of the bathroom.
Jail superintendent A. G. Sainath Reddy and Vizag City Police Commissioner A. K. Khan visited the spot. After an inquest, the body was sent to King George Hospital for postmortem.
Raj Kumar was working as chief security officer in the Naval Armament Depot when he was arrested by the police under Official Secrets Act on Aug. 20 this year for passing classified information on the Indian Navy to Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agents based at Katmandu in Nepal. He was charged with espionage alongwith two others — chief petty officer Rajbir Singh and former naval officer Balwinder Singh Pawar.
After being lodged in the Central Prison at Vizag, Raj Kumar applied for bail thrice. But his pleas were rejected, causing him frustration. He chatted up with other inmates on Saturday night, before taking the extreme step.
