London, Nov 25 (IANS) Ex-van driver Maninder Pal Singh Kohli was Tuesday sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 24 years for the rape and murder of 17-year-old Hannah Foster, ringing the curtain down on a manhunt spanning two nations and more than five years.
Kohli, 41-year-old father of two, shook his head slightly as the jury at Winchester Crown Court returned unanimous verdicts finding him guilty of the murder, rape, false imprisonment and kidnap of Foster in the city of Southampton March 14, 2003.
Sentencing him, the judge reminded him one last time of 'Hannah's vulnerability as a young slip of a girl, the terrible and appalling ordeal which Hannah must have gone through before you killed her, the wanton way you disposed of her body and the unimaginable grief to which you have subjected her family'.
'It took a long time for you to be brought to justice but the law caught up with you in the end,' the judge told Kohli, who was arrested leading a new life in Kalimpong, West Bengal, living with a woman in July 2004 before being extradited to Britain in July last year.
After having confessed to his crime in India, Kohli changed his story during the six-week trial in Britain, saying he was the victim of a revenge plot, in which he was abducted and forced to have sex with a woman whom he later knew to be Hannah.
The judge commended the jury for seeing through Kohli's 'lies'.
Hannah's parents Hilary and Trevor Foster, who had taken their campaign to track down Kohli to India, spoke of their 'overwhelming sense of relief' at the verdict.
'Today finally justice has caught up with him,' they said.
The sentence rang the curtain down on a case that saw the victim's parents of take their campaign to track down Kohli all the way to India, before he was spotted by residents of Kalimpong town.
Hannah's body was found March 16, strangled and lying in a bramble-filled ditch by the side of a road, a short walking distance from her home.
Hannah, who had spent the evening out with her parents, had been kidnapped by Kohli while she was walking back home. The secondary school student called emergency services, but the call was terminated when she did not speak.
Two days after Hannah's body was found, Kohli panicked, borrowed some money from his father-in-law and caught a flight for India, heading for Chandigarh. Once a turban-wearing Sikh, he shaved off his beard, changed his name and eventually created a new life for himself in hills of Kalimpong.
Next year, Hannah's parents, along with the Hampshire police, visited India and led a media campaign, announcing a 70,000 pounds award. Within days, Kohli - living under the name of Mike Davies - was spotted out in Kalimpong.
During the trial Kohli claimed he was the victim of a plot that was carried out by his colleague James Dennis to whom Kohli owed 16,000 pounds and with whose wife the sandwich delivery-man claimed to have had a secret affair.
When Dennis demanded the money back, Kohli said he threatened to publicise the alleged affair, which prompted the act of revenge.
But the prosecution dismissed his claim as 'an utterly fantastical story…. a pack of lies from start to finish'.
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