The Thiruvananthapuram First Additional District and Sessions Court, on Tuesday, awarded double life imprisonment until death to two youths who were found guilty of raping and murdering a Latvian woman near Kovalam four years ago.

Additional District and Sessions Court Judge K Sanil Kumar awarded the double life imprisonment to Umesh, 31, and Udayakumar, 28 under Sections 376A (punishment for causing death or resulting in persistent vegetative state of victim) and Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). A double life term implies the convict has to remain in jail till the end of his life.

The court said for raping the woman resulting in her death, the convicts should serve life imprisonment till their biological death and are not entitled to remission or parole.

The court also slapped a fine of Rs 1.65 lakh on each of the convicts and directed it to be given to the family of the victims. The court also said the victim’s family should be compensated under the Victims Compensation Scheme.

Earlier on Friday, the court found the two accused guilty of rape and murder, wrongful confinement, abduction and sale of narcotic substances.

The court witnessed dramatic incidents prior to the sentencing on Tuesday morning. The accused shouted they are innocent and demanded that a lie detector test should be conducted on them to prove their innocence. They also claimed to have seen a yoga master running away from the crime spot on the day the Latvian tourist was murdered and alleged that the police did not investigate the hair that was found near the dead body.

The 33-year-old Latvian woman and her sister had arrived in Kerala for Ayurveda treatment and went missing from Kovalam beach on March 14, 2018.Later, her highly decomposed body was recovered from a mangrove forest nearby Thiruvallam near Kovalam on April 20, the same year. It was identified by her sister.

The prosecution case was that the accused Umesh   and Udayakumar had lured the victim to the mangrove forest, drugged her and then sexually assaulted her. It was argued that when she resisted, the two men strangled her to death, and hung her from a tree.

The case was built around 18 circumstantial evidence and all of them were accepted by the court. The prosecution proved the rape charge by linking the injuries that were sustained by the victim in her private parts as well as the lack of explanation and the lies given by the accused regarding the injury marks in their body parts, which were sustained during the same period as the murder.

The prosecution had examined 30 witnesses, produced 79 documents and eight pieces of material evidence before the court. The absence of eye witnesses made the case a challenging one and the police had to do in depth analysis of the circumstantial evidence and statements of the witnesses to build a watertight case. The antecedents of sexual assaults of the accused was also linked to the case and circumstantial evidence turned out to be crucial in proving the case.