Anna University rape perpetrator receives life sentence

A Mahila Court in Chennai, India, on Monday 2 June sentenced A Gnanasekaran, the sole accused in the 2024 Anna University campus rape case, to life imprisonment without the possibility of remission, writes Arun Janardhanan for The Indian Express.

The court ordered that he must serve a minimum of 30 years in prison and imposed a fine of INR90,000 (US$1,050) on him. Mahila Court judge M Rajalakshmi handed down the sentence four days after convicting Gnanasekaran on 11 charges, including rape, abduction, wrongful confinement and criminal intimidation under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the Information Technology Act, and the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Harassment of Women Act.

The judgment came nearly six months after the survivor, a 19-year-old student, filed a complaint on 24 December 2024. According to police, on the night of 23 December, the student and a male friend were sitting in the university campus when Gnanasekaran, a 37-year-old roadside biryani vendor with a long criminal record, confronted them. He pretended to record a video of the pair and used the threat of exposing the footage to manipulate and separate them.
Full report on The Indian Express site