IANS
Mumbai

A Mumbai court yesterday sentenced to death a 29-year-old man found guilty of robbing, raping, burning and killing Esther Anuhya, a software engineer from Andhra Pradesh, on January 5, 2014.
Terming it a ‘rarest of rare cases’, judge Vrushali Joshi pronounced the verdict against Chandrabhan Sudam Sanap, who was found guilty of multiple crimes on October 27.
Judge Joshi observed: “For the murder charge, the accused shall be hanged by the neck till death.”
The 23-year-old victim’s father, Jonathan Prasad and brother Thomas Noble - welcomed the verdict.
Anuhya had arrived from Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, at the Lokmanya Tilak Railway Terminus after a Christmas break to rejoin work at the Tata Consultancy Services in Goregaon here.
Sanap, posing as a taxi driver, offered to drop Anuhya at her hostel in south Mumbai.
However, when she walked out of the terminus with her luggage, she found Sanap had neither a taxi nor an autorickshaw but a motorcycle.
When Anuhya refused to sit on the motorcycle, he asked her to make a call and inform her family about his details and the vehicle registration number. Although Anuhya pretended to make the call to her family she did not as there was not enough credit left on her phone.
En route, Sanap stopped the bike on a desolate road and dragged Anuhya into the bushes and attempted to rape her.
When she resisted, Sanap hit her head with a stone and strangled her. Later, he poured petrol and attempted to burn her body.
Sanap was arrested from Nashik on March 3.