The California prison system has a detailed policy on hunger strikes that requires correctional officers and medical staff to follow numerous procedures. Guards must document in writing any refusal of meals, determine the reason for the hunger strike and report it to a supervisor and healthcare staff.
Under the rules, nurses and doctors must visit an inmate in his cell daily and assess weight, physical and emotional condition, blood pressure and fluid loss. If an inmate's condition grows worse, the prison can force-feed fluids and nutrients.
None of this was done for Singh, corrections officials acknowledged.
But they now say that Singh hadn't officially declared a hunger strike, and that his case falls into a grayer area.
"He was refusing meals sporadically, but it wasn't an existing 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."
But the prisoners who shared his cellblock tell a different story -- of an inmate who didn't have the language skills to communicate that he was on a hunger strike. His refusal to leave his cell to go to the dining hall, coupled with his severe weight loss and physical deterioration, should have brought the same level of care as that of a hunger striker, inmates told Romero and two members of her staff.
"Here is a guy who's clinically depressed and starving himself, and there's no indication in the logbook that medical staff is responding to his needs," Romero said. "No one went to his cell to check on him, despite repeated concerns from inmates and some officers that he was wasting away."
Singh's care presented the prison system with challenges, according to Sikh community leaders, his former attorneys and inmates who shared his cellblock in the prison's so-called "special needs yard," a section for sexual offenders and others who are considered prey by more dangerous inmates.
Singh was not only frail and burdened with a bad leg, but he also was fighting severe depression after having been convicted of sexually touching three children in a case that divided the Sikh community around Modesto. Singh, a husband and father, had been the temple's high priest until an opposing faction, calling for new leadership, forced him out.
