TWO taxi drivers may be executed after they were convicted of raping, robbing and murdering an Australian tourist within hours of her arrival in India four years ago.
Dawn Griggs, a 59-year-old writer and educator from Byron Bay, landed at Delhi airport in March 2004 to join a meditation course. She arranged for a prepaid taxi to drive her from the airport to a suburban ashram.
Instead, she was taken to a deserted field near the airport and murdered by the drivers, Jyotish Prasad and Ashish Kumar. It is common for taxi drivers in India to have an associate in the front seat with them while they are working. An autopsy found Ms Griggs had been gagged, strangled and stabbed.
Prasad, 28, was arrested soon after the body was found and Kumar, 31, was detained four days later. Both have been in jail since. They were initially charged with murder and robbery. The charge of rape was added after further medical evidence was received.
The conviction is considered an important success for Delhi police, who have been under pressure after a string of violent crimes. Police held one of the accused in a headlock as the pair were paraded in front of the media while entering court on Saturday. The prosecution said the pair killed Ms Griggs with tools kept in the taxi. It also alleged her face had been disfigured by the murderers so that she would not be recognised, The Times of India reported. The police submitted a DNA report linking the accused to the crime.
Neither of the taxi drivers could hire a lawyer so a court-appointed legal team represented them, the paper said.
The defence alleged the police were under extreme pressure to ensure a conviction and argued that the evidence against the pair was only circumstantial – there were no witnesses. However, the judge, Vinod Kumar, found the prosecution had “conclusively established” guilt. “All the circumstances have been proved by the prosecution and lead to the irresistible conclusion that the accused subjected the foreigner to gang-rape and killed her after robbing her of valuables,” he said.
Prasad and Kumar are expected to be sentenced today.
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