Dutch paedophile prisoner dies (William Heum)
Dutch paedophile prisoner dies
DC | V.P. Raghu | 15 hours 18 min ago
inShare
Printer-friendly version
Send by email
Picture for representational purpose only.
Chennai: Puzhal jail came into the ‘limelight’ with notorious paedophile William Heum, who was imprisoned there for child abuse, besides filming and uploading child pornography on the Internet, dying on Wednesday, while the death of another prisoner led to more than a dozen inmates staging a protest alleging that the hospital in the jail did not have adequate facilities.
William Heum, 60, a Dutch national, died in Royapettah hospital where he was admitted with symptoms of acute asthma. “He died early on Wednesday morning without responding to treatment,” a jail official said.
Heum, who claimed to be a social worker, was arrested on November 7, 2009, from a house in Choolaimedu in Chennai, following an Interpol alert that he was uploading child pornograpy on the Internet. The case was the first such registered in India under the new IT Act.
The convict was first charged in May 2002 for allegedly abusing more than 40 orphans in the shelter opened by him in Mahabalipuram. Heum was arrested again for Internet child pornography in 2009 and imprisoned in 2011.
In Puzhal jail, where Heum was imprisoned, more than a dozen inmates protested against the dearth of facilities at the hospital there, following the death of Bhagyaraj, a murder accused who was suffering from a kidney-related ailment.
“The inmates protested for nearly 15 minutes before jail officials pacified them. Bhagyaraj died in Royapettah GH. Two inmates — one from the convict prison and another from the remand prison — died on Tuesday night,” jail sources said.