PIO jailed for violating, murdering NZ woman with Down’s syndrome

Melbourne, May 7

A 33-year-old Indian-origin homeless man has been sentenced to nearly 20 years imprisonment in New Zealand for sexually violating and fatally strangling a woman with Down’s syndrome in September 2021, a media report said.

Shamal Sharma violently preyed on 27-year-old Lena Zhang Harrap, a woman with Down’s syndrome when she was out on her daily walk in Auckland on September 22, 2021, The NZ Herald newspaper reported on Thursday.

Harrap’s body was found partially concealed along a bush-lined walkway about a kilometre from her Mt Albert home after a large-scale, hours-long search, the report said.

Sharma has been ordered to spend the next 19 and a half years in prison, the report said.

According to police, Harrap was tortured over a period of about two hours, inflicting multiple blows to her face before strangling her, which led to her death. Harrap had received 13 bruises and abrasions to her head, as well as blunt force trauma that caused brain injuries but was not fatal.

Some injuries were so brutal that they could have independently caused her death, Crown prosecutor Matthew Nathan was quoted as saying as he acknowledged Sharma’s history of schizophrenia but noted that he was not found to be legally insane at the time of the offending and that the attack was motivated by sexual desire.