Isolation marks inmate’s suicide in Ludhiana ‘s Central Jail; autopsy on hold as family remains untraced.

Ludhiana: A local court has halted the autopsy of a Ludhiana Central Jail inmate who died by suspected suicide after authorities failed to locate any trace of his family.Security staff had found the body of Sukhwinder Singh, of Batala, Gurdaspur, inside a prison washroom at about 6.30am on Tuesday and claimed it hanged from a nine-foot-high window grill reached using a low partition wall in theory.The post-mortem examination was scheduled originally for Wednesday, but judicial magistrate first class Karanbir Singh Batra deferred it for 72 hours to allow time to contact the next of kin.The delay highlights the inmate’s total isolation during his year-long incarceration. Jail records revealed that the emergency contact number he had provided belonged to a former cellmate who has since been released on bail. Prison administration data confirmed that no visitors had met with him since his admission on May 3, 2025.Sukhwinder Singh was being held as an undertrial prisoner following his arrest by Division Number 5 police for attempted illegal possession of property in Ashok Nagar, Ludhiana.The incident marks the latest in a series of suspected suicides and custodial deaths at the Ludhiana facility over recent years. In Oct 2025, a 27-year-old inmate, who was HIV-positive and serving sentences for two drug peddling convictions, died by suicide inside a barracks bathroom.A separate judicial probe concluded in Sept 2023 determined that the 2019 death of another inmate was also a suicide, prompting police to register an abetment case against unidentified individuals. That inmate had fallen ill from poisoning three days after his arrest under the NDPS Act and later died during treatment at Rajindra Hospital in Patiala.