Auckland: A 33-year-old Indian-origin man has been jailed for more than 19 years in New Zealand for sexually assaulting and fatally strangling a woman with Down’s syndrome. Shamal Sharma, NZ Herald reports. Justice Edwin Wylie at the High Court in Auckland this week handed down the minimum term of mandatory life imprisonment. During this he did not show any emotion.
Sharma was arrested two days after the body of 27-year-old Lena Zhang Harrap was found about a kilometer from her Mount Albert home in September 2021. According to court documents, when Harrap left her home for a morning walk He got Sharma. He tortured her for about two hours and inflicted several blows on her face before strangulating her, which led to her death. After hiding the victim’s body in the bushes, officials said, Sharma fled the scene. Two days later the police arrested him.
A pathologist reported that Harrap had 13 lacerations and scratches to his head. There was also internal trauma to the brain, although this was not fatal. Public prosecutor Matthew Nathan told the court that some of the injuries were so brutal that they alone could have caused his death. He accepted that Sharma was suffering from schizophrenia, but said the attack was motivated by sexual desire. There is a degree of gratification in causing pain to others, he told the judge.
The court was told that barely 24 hours before the incident, Sharma had also violently assaulted a stranger walking on the footpath, who managed to save herself and called the police from a nearby house.Harp No sentence is long enough, and no amount of justice can replace the life and love that is gone, Sharma’s mother said after the court’s decision. Sharma’s lawyer Jonathan Hudson said, reports stuff.co.nz. that his client suffered from schizophrenia and had been living in his car since being evicted from emergency housing. As mentioned – Involves severe cruelty.
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