Danielle McLaughlin case: Man jailed for life in India

NEW DELHI: An Indian court jailed a 31-year-old man for life on Monday following the rape and murder of a young Irish backpacker Danielle McLaughlin in the tourist resort state of Goa, nearly eight years after the crime.

Danielle McLaughlin was 28 when she visited Goa in March 2017 and befriended Vikat Bhagat, the man convicted of the crime.

“Today the court has given the final verdict, life imprisonment to the accused,” investigating officer Filomeno Costa told the ANI news agency.

Her lawyer, Vikas Varma, said the body was discovered in a forested area of Goa’s Palolem beach, bearing multiple injuries, including some on her face.

“Nothing can compensate the loss of a child, but the sentence has diluted the grief of the family,” Varma said in a statement to Reuters. “It was a long battle of nearly eight years but justice has been done.”

Forensic reports confirmed the woman was raped and her face smashed in with a beer bottle to frustrate efforts to identify her, the lawyer said.

Vikat Bhagat’s lawyers asked the court to take a lenient view in handing down the sentence, media reported. Reuters could not immediately contact them.

India tightened laws on rape and set up fast-track special courts after the brutal 2012 gang-rape of a young woman in a Delhi bus and her murder shocked the country. But more than a decade later, the picture is still grim.

Reuters investigations last year showed India had slashed its targeted number of such courts to 790 by 2026, from 2,600 projected earlier.

Last month, a court handed a life sentence to a police volunteer convicted of the rape and murder of a junior doctor at a hospital in the eastern city of Kolkata.