AR-News: (US)On ‘hunger strike’, Si kh priest dies in California jail

[Animalconcerns]

[from Indian Express]

FRESNO (CALIFORNIA), MARCH 15: For two months, guards and medical staff at
a California state prison failed to provide meals or emergency care to an
imprisoned Sikh priest from India, Khem Singh, dying of malnutrition,
according to inmate accounts given to a state senator.

In the days before 72-year-old Singh — who spoke no English and was
crippled — starved to death at the Substance Abuse Treatment Facility in
Corcoran last month, inmates said, they alerted correctional officers to
his condition and filed complaints. But no medical help was provided.
While some accounts said Singh was on a hunger strike, others insisted he
wanted vegetarian meals but was consistently served meat. 
...
In the days after Singh’s death, corrections officials in Sacramento said
he had been depressed since arriving at the prison in 2001, protesting
against his molestation conviction and refusing to eat a diet that didn’t
conform to his vegetarian practices. The official account was that he died
after a series of ‘‘on and off again’’ hunger strikes. But the California
prison system has a detailed policy on handling such strikes: guards must
document refusal of meals, determine the reason for it and report it to a
supervisor; nurses and doctors must visit the inmate daily and assess his
weight, and if the inmate’s condition worsens, the prison could force-feed
fluids and nutrients.

None of this was done for Singh, corrections officials admit. But now they
say that Singh hadn’t officially declared a hunger strike. ‘‘He was
refusing meals sporadically, but it wasn’t a hunger strike,’’ said Kelley
Santoro, the prison’s public information officer. ‘‘Was he eating
sporadically because he was a vegetarian and didn’t like the food served
to him? Was he being monitored? All that is under investigation.’’ 
...
Inmates said he would pray and bow to them and guards, but would grow
frustrated when prison staff insisted on serving meat. He would often eat
just a piece of bread with peanut butter. ‘‘One inmate told us this whole
thing is about vegetables. ‘If they would have just given him vegetables
instead of meat, he would be alive today’,’’ Romero said. ‘‘But every time
he was in line, they insisted on slopping down the meat’.’’

full story:
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=43024

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