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Mr. Singh, who was the driver of a bus in which a 23-year-old woman was beaten, raped and attacked with an iron rod, was found hanging from a ceiling grill from a rope made from a bedsheet at 5:45 a.m., jail officials said. A cause of death was not identified, and an investigation is under way, they said.

Family members and his lawyer said Monday that they suspected he was murdered. Mr. Singh's right arm was seriously damaged by a bus accident, and he would have been unable to tie a noose, they said. He shared his cell in the Tihar prison complex with several inmates.

"I suspect there is foul play," said V.K. Anand, the lawyer representing Mr. Singh in the case. "There were no circumstances for committing suicide. His mental state was stable, the trial was going well, he was meeting with his family," he said. "I can't understand why he would commit suicide."

Mr. Singh and his brother Mukesh are two of the five men accused in the case, which is being tried in a special "fast track" court in South Delhi set up for sexual assault charges.

A sixth defendant, a teenager, is being tried as a juvenile. The five adult men face 13 charges, including murder — which could carry the death penalty if they are found guilty — rape and robbery.

Mr. Singh, whose job was to transport schoolchildren around in the bus that later became the scene of the attack, was the first suspect the police found after the attack was reported.

His confession to the police led them to the other accused and helped the police piece together what happened that night.

According to the police charge sheet, the group of drunken men went looking for victims to harass, tricked the young woman and a friend into coming onto the bus, brutally attacked them, stripped off their clothes and left them to die on a highway.

Earlier police confessions are not admissible in court as evidence in India, and Mr. Singh had not yet testified in court. Even without his testimony, the police said they had forensic evidence linking the five men and the juvenile to the woman who was killed and to her male companion, who was also beaten in the attack.

Mr. Singh's brother, who asked that his name not be used to shield him from further news media attention, said by telephone that his brother had shown no suicidal tendencies. Last Friday, Mr. Singh's parents visited him in jail, his brother said, and he appeared calm then.

Mr. Singh's adopted son had visited him last Wednesday, the brother added. "He seemed happy and even made the little boy sit on his lap and talk to him," he said. "He has never said or done anything that indicated that he was contemplating suicide."