Indian-origin man sentenced for assaulting and murdering woman with Down's syndrome in New Zealand

A 33-year-old Indian-origin homeless man has been sentenced to nearly 20 years imprisonment in New Zealand for sexually violating and fatally strangling a woman with Down's syndrome in September 2021, a media report said.

Shamal Sharma violently preyed on 27-year-old Lena Zhang Harrap, a woman with Down syndrome when she was out on her daily walk in Auckland on September 22, 2021, The NZ Herald newspaper reported on Thursday.

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Harrap's body was found partially concealed along a bush-lined walkway about a kilometre from her Mt Albert home after a large-scale, hours-long search involving police and members of the public, the report said.

Sharma, who has been ordered to spend the next 19 and a half years in prison was arrested on September 24, two days after committing the heinous crime, the report said.

According to police, Harrap was tortured over a period of about two hours, inflicting multiple blows to her face before strangling her, which led to her death.

Harrap had received 13 bruises and abrasions to her head, as well as blunt force trauma that caused brain injuries but was not fatal.

Some injuries were so brutal that they could have independently caused her death, Crown prosecutor Matthew Nathan was quoted as saying as he acknowledged Sharma's history of schizophrenia but noted that he was not found to be legally insane at the time of the offending and that the attack was motivated by sexual desire.

"This has a degree of sadism through the infliction of pain," Nathan told the judge.

Sharma was also charged with harassing another woman who was jogging in Henderson, West Auckland, 24 hours prior to violently murdering Harrap.

He stared forward with no discernable emotion in the High Court after the court announced the minimum term of imprisonment for the mandatory life sentence, it said.

“No sentence is long enough, and no justice can replace the life and love that was lost,” Harrap's mother, Su Harrap was quoted as saying.