New Delhi: Two taxi drivers were on Saturday held guilty by a Delhi court of killing 59-year-old Australian tourist Dawn Emilie Griggs after raping and robbing her of valuables within hours of her landing here in 2004 to get enrolled in a meditation course.

“All the circumstances have been proved by prosecution and lead to irresistible conclusion that the accused subjected the foreigner to gang-rape and killed her after robbing her of valuables,” Additional Sessions Judge Vinod Kumar said.

The court convicted Jyotish Prasad, 28, and Ashish Kumar, in his early 30s, for the offences of gang-rape, murder, robbery, destruction of evidence and common intention under the Indian Penal Code.

The court said that it would pronounce quantum of sentence -- which may range from rigorous life imprisonment to death sentence -- against the convicted taxi drivers, who remained in jail during the four-year-long trial, on August 4.

Griggs who landed here from Hong Kong on a Cathay Pacific Flight in the wee hours of March 17, 2004 for enrolling in a meditation course with Brahmakumari Aishwarya Vidyalaya, took a pre-paid taxi from IGI airport, and was later found murdered in a nearby deserted field.

Pronouncing the verdict in a packed courtroom, the judge said: “Jyotish Prasad and Ashish Kumar, the offence of killing and gang-rape against foreigner lady after robbing her of valuables is proved against you.”

In a case hinged on circumstantial evidence, the court in its 75-page verdict held that the prosecution has conclusively established the complicity of the drivers by linking them with the chain of events.

Griggs’ body was found, with stab injuries and her face smashed, in a deserted area near Indira Gandhi International Airport here on March 17, 2004.

Prasad and Kumar raped and killed her by inflicting injuries with some tools kept in the taxi, the prosecution said.

After committing the offence, they tried to decamp with the belongings of the tourist but later abandoned them barely 200 meters away from the spot of the crime as they did not find anything substantial in her bags, it said.

As there was no eye-witness to the gruesome killing, the prosecution relied on circumstantial and forensic evidence including the DNA reports of the drivers.

The police reached the duo by scrutinising the records of pre-paid taxi booth at the airport.

The post-mortem, conducted on her at Safdarjung hospital here, established that she was stabbed, gagged and strangled, he had argued.

The duo were represented by amicus curiae (friend of court) Vikas Arora who contended that they were framed by the police which were under pressure to workout the case.

The police had claimed the murder was committed for robbery. However, the victim’s valuables and jewellery were found intact -- an indication of the loopholes in the police theory, defence counsel Arora had claimed. PTI

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