VINAY SHARMA MOVES COURT PLEADING INSANITY

NEW DELHI: A Delhi court on Thursday sought the response of the Tihar jail authorities on a plea filed one of the December 16 gang rape case death row convicts — Vinay Sharma —seeking treatment at the Institute of Human Behaviour & Allied Sciences (IHBAS).

Sharma’s counsel, AP Singh, told the court that his client suffers from mental illness, schizophrenia and has failed to recognise his counsel and family.

Additional sessions judge Dharmendra Rana sought a status report from the prison authorities and posted the matter for further hearing on February 22. In his plea, Sharma has sought directions to authorities to provide him high-level medical treatment to him for his injuries.

The plea said that when his counsel came to meet Sharma in jail, he found that Sharma had grievous head injury, fracture in his right arm with plaster, and was suffering from insanity, mental illness and schizophrenia.

It alleged that Sharma could not identify his counsel or his mother during a legal meeting on Wednesday.

The application contended that the convict was also found to have “decreased sleep” since long time and was prescribed medicine by a senior psychiatrist in view of drug dependence. It said that based on medical records, it was contended that Sharma has been on psychiatric medication and was diagnosed with adjustment disorder.

“In the convict’s psychiatric records, the most common symptoms recorded were ‘decreased appetite’, ‘decreased sleep’, ‘repetitive ruminative thoughts’ and ‘irritability’. In addition to these, documents dated August 6, 2016, and August 24, 2016, and February 10, 2018, show multiple attempts of suicide and self harm by the convict Vinay Sharma,” the plea read.

Jail officers, when contacted, however, said that Sharma appears to be perfectly normal and in sound mental health. “We will file a reply in court,” an officer, who did not wish to be named, said.

Sharma along with Mukesh Singh, Pawan Gupta and Akshay Thakur were sentenced to death by a Delhi court in 2013 after they were found guilty of brutally raping and murdering a 23-yearold paramedic student on a moving bus on December 16, 2012. Their hanging, as ordered by a city court, has been postponed twice.

On February 17, a Delhi court had issued fresh warrants, for the third time, to hang the convicts till death on March 3 at 6am.