Auckland, May 7 (IANS) A 33-year-old Indian-origin man has been sentenced to more than 19 years in prison in New Zealand for sexually violating and fatally strangling a woman with Down syndrome in 2021, media reports said. Sharma was arrested in September 2021, two days after 27-year-old Lena Zhang Harrap's body was discovered about a kilometre away from her Mt. According to court documents, Harrap encountered Sharma early in the morning when she had stepped out for a walk. "No sentence is long enough, and no justice can replace the life and love that was lost," Harrap's mother said after the court judgment. The report quoted Justice Wylie as saying that Sharma's offence included "a high level of brutality and callousness against a profoundly vulnerable woman, described by the family as childlike".

Source: Stuff May 07, 2023 06:30 UTC