NEW DELHI -- Uber cab driver Shiv Kumar Yadav, who raped a 25-year-old woman in Delhi last year, has been given life imprisonment. A special fast track court in Delhi pronounced the judgment on Tuesday afternoon. This comes close to 11 months after Yadav raped a woman who had booked his cab via the taxi-hailing app to travel from Gurgaon to her north-west Delhi home.
Special Public Prosecutor Atul Shrivastava had said earlier that he would seek life imprisonment for Yadav, which is the maximum punishment in this case. Yadav is 32 years old.
"Oral evidence, medical evidence and scientific evidence was considered during the judgement. I would be asking for maximum punishment that is under section 376 (2)(M) life imprisonment for the accused," Shrivastava told journalists last month.
ALSO READ: Timeline: Uber Cabbie Rapes Woman In Delhi
The court in its 99-page judgement said that the young woman's rape reminded them of the brutal gang rape of a young medical student in 2012, as Yadav had threatened to insert an iron rod in her body.
Additional Sessions Judge Kaveri Baweja, who had convicted Yadav, pronounced the sentence in court where his wife and two daughters were also present.
The court had on 20 October held Yadav guilty of offences under sections 376(2)(m) (while committing rape causes grievous bodily harm or disfigures or endangers life of a woman), 366 (abducting with an intent to compel her for marriage), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 323 (causing hurt) of the IPC.
The offence of endangering woman's life while raping her entails a minimum of 10 years rigorous imprisonment and a maximum of life term.
The court has held that threat perception was very much real in the mind of the 25-year-old girl when the driver had intimidated and threatened her that too at an isolated spot in the late hours of 5 December, 2014.
According to the prosecution, the incident took place on the night of December 5 last year when the girl, a finance executive working in Gurgaon, was heading back to her house at Inderlok.
Accused driver Shiv Kumar Yadav was arrested on 7 December 2014 from Mathura and has been in judicial custody since then.
(with PTI inputs)
Contact HuffPost India
Also see on HuffPost: