A man charged with murder in the Oct. 2022 stabbing of a Purdue University student has once again been declared unfit to stand trial.
Tippecanoe Circuit Court Judge Sean Persin ruled 23-year-old Ji Min Sha to be unable to comprehend his trial in an order issued Dec. 7. Two court-ordered mental evaluations found that he was able to understand the details regarding his case, but he would not be able to defend himself.
Sha faces one count of murder in the Oct. 2022 stabbing of Varun Manish Chhedad, 20, of Indianapolis.
He was diagnosed with schizophrenia while at Logansport State Hospital this year, after he was found unfit to stand trial in December last year.
Sha showed improvement at the hospital with antipsychotic medication and legal counseling. He was transported back to Tippecanoe County Jail after a court-appointed mental evaluation deemed him fit to stand trial in September.
Read more: Ji Min Sha deemed fit for trial
The court issued a medication compliance order in October, and the two most recent evaluations were ordered two weeks later. In both evaluations, Sha was exhibiting delusions.
The Tippecanoe jail reported a medication non-compliance on Nov. 8. In the Dec. 7 order, Judge Persin said, “it is unclear how much of this [delusions] related to medication non-compliance in the county jail.”
Sha and his roommate Chhedad lived in McCutcheon Hall on Purdue University’s West Lafayette campus. Prosecutors allege that Sha stabbed Chheda several times in the head and neck with a folding knife that officers found on the floor near the chair where Chheda’s body was discovered.
Purdue Police Chief Lesley Wiete said Sha called police early on Oct. 5, 2022, and told them his roommate was dead in their dorm room. Officers who arrested Sha found him wearing clothes with blood on them, prosecutors said. An autopsy found that Chheda had died of “multiple sharp-force traumatic injuries.”
In interviews with both doctors, Sha said he was in contact with the CIA as a counter-terrorism agent, and continued contact with them through “sonar” in the jail. He said Chhedad tried to kill him with a knife, calling him a “bad CIA and Moussad.” He said that Chhedad's “attempt to kill him” was to get his “two million dollars” in biotech stock.
Sha will be placed back into the Division of Mental Health. The order did not list which facility he would be relocated to.
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