London, November 25
Ending years of legal tussle and a prolonged manhunt across India, Maninderpal Singh Kohli was today sentenced to life imprisonment by a court here after convicting him of the rape-and-murder of 17-year-old British schoolgirl Hannah Foster in 2003.

The 41-year-old former delivery driver for a sandwich firm will spend a minimum of 24 years behind bars before he could be considered for parole.

Amid dramatic scenes at Winchester Crown Court, Kohli was convicted by a 12-member jury of bundling the teenager into the back of his van, raping and strangling her before dumping her body in a ditch in Southampton.

The jury, including four women, delivered its unanimous verdict after deliberating for five and a half hours.

The sensational case had hit headlines in Britain and India where Kohli, a father of two, had fled after the murder.

He changed his name in India but was finally apprehended in Darjeeling and extradited to Britain in July 2007 following a media campaign orchestrated by Hannah’s parents and the Hampshire police.

Kohli had claimed he was innocent and that he had been abducted, blindfolded and tied up on the night of Hannah’s death and forced to have sex with the teenager.

During the six-week trial, he painted a picture of himself as a victim of a revenge attack orchestrated by his former colleague. Kohli said he owed his colleague 16,000 pounds and had an affair with his wife.

Foster was walking a short distance home after a night out when she disappeared in March 2003. Kohli snatched the teenager from a street yards from her home in Southampton after she had spent an evening with friends. Foster’s body was found dumped by a road two days later.

She had earlier called the emergency number 999, hoping an operator would hear what was happening, but the call was terminated when she did not speak.

Kohli was working with a sandwich company in Southampton, where he lived with his wife and two young sons. He did not have any criminal record and had never figured in a police investigation since moving to England from India in 1994.

He married a British woman of Indian origin and for nine years the family led a quiet life — until the night of Friday, March 14, 2003, when Kohli abducted, raped and killed Foster.

After the attack, Kohli fled to India where he changed his appearance, used a false name and began a new life in the foothills of the Himalayas, where he married bigamously.

He was eventually captured after 17 months on the run when Hannah’s parents, Trevor and Hilary Foster, travelled to India to launch an appeal for help to trace him.

Kohli had initially made a full confession to Indian police, claiming he wanted to unburden himself and pay for his crimes. But within days he withdrew it and put up a protracted legal fight against his extradition.

His arrival back in Britain in July last year made him the first man to be extradited from India. Hilary, 52, Trevor, 58 and their daughter Sarah, 20, were in court and broke down in tears as the verdict was read out.

A post-mortem examination of Hannah’s body showed that she had been strangled. Although fully dressed, her clothing had been tampered with and she had scratches on her legs.

That day, Kohli was spotted with a mark under his eye, pleading with a colleague for cash for a flight to India.

Kohli became the prime suspect after his supervisor saw a television appeal and noticed that the route Hannah’s killer had used was the same as the one he had taught Kohli when he became a sandwich delivery driver. Kohli’s DNA matched semen found at the murder scene. — PTI