Sacramento,Feb 28, 2004
Khem Singh, a 72-year-old Sikh priest, 80-pound inmate
died at a prison in Corcoran who hadn't eaten in 40 days might not have
surprised California corrections administrators. He was serving a prison
term on charges of molesting an eight-year-old girl.
Khem Singh was arrested in November 1999 when the girl's
family, which he was visiting to read from the Guru Granth Sahib, alleged
that he had hugged and touched her in an inappropriate manner.
A jury of the Stanislaus County Superior Court had convicted
him in June 2001 and he was sentenced to 23 years in prison.
He was Claiming that he is innocent and wrongly convicted
by the Stanislaus County Superior Court, Singh, who did not speak or
understand English, had been on and off hunger strikes ever since he
was lodged at the Corcoran State Prison. He refused to see his family
More than a year ago, a state prison watchdog agency
issued a blistering confidential report on health services at the facility,
suggesting three inmate deaths in the previous two years could be attributed
in part to negligent medical treatment. Now an inmate is dead after
apparently slowly starving himself to death, and prisoner advocates
are wondering just what it will take to improve medical treatment at
the Substance Abuse Treatment Facility in Corcoran.
Meanwhile, corrections officials say they're still trying
to determine exactly what happened to Khem Singh last week. Singh, 72,
had been on and off hunger strikes since he was sent to prison in 2001.
Before dying, he had not eaten in 40 days, according
to Patrick Hart, chief deputy district attorney for Kings County. Prison
documents indicate he was removed from his cell Feb. 14 and taken to
a local hospital, where he died two days later of heart and lung failure
attributed to starvation. Corrections officials say Singh had been in
and out of a medical clinic at the prison but was not there this month.
"After 40 days, you would think he would have been in the hospital,''
said Kelly Santoro, public information director for the prison.