A Thiruvananthapuram court on Tuesday sentenced two men to life imprisonment for raping and murdering a Latvian woman in Kerala in 2018, reported The Indian Express.
The court also imposed a fine of Rs 1.65 lakh each on the two convicts, Umesh and Udayakumar.
The decomposed body of the 32-year-old woman was found in April 2018 in a mangrove forest near the city of Kovalam, almost a month after she was reported missing. The woman, her partner and her sister were in India to undergo ayurvedic treatment at a facility near Thiruvananthapuram.
A month after her body was found, the police arrested Umesh and Udayakumar, alleging that they drugged the woman before raping and murdering her. The police said that the two men were habitual offenders who have been involved in multiple narcotics and assault-related cases.
After the ruling on Tuesday, the convicts demanded that a lie detector test should be conducted to allow them to prove their innocence, reported The News Minute. They also claimed that they had seen a yoga guru running away from the crime spot on the day the Latvian woman was murdered. They alleged that the police did not investigate strands of hair that were found near the dead body.
Assistant Commissioner of Police JK Dinil, however, told the court that the officials had ruled out the allegations during the investigation, reported The New Indian Express.
The case had received media attention after the sister of the murdered woman, started to track her down, according to The Indian Express. Besides registering a police complaint, she also visited several locations and homes to trace her sister, put up posters and announced a reward for information about her.
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