By IANS,
Sydney : A 21-year-old Australian man of Sri Lankan descent, who raped and murdered an Indian woman, has been sentenced to 45 years in jail by a Sydney court Friday.
The New South Wales Supreme Court ruled that Daniel Stani-Reginald would not be eligible for parole for a minimum of 30 years for raping and murdering Tosha Thakkar, then 24, in a Sydney flat March 9, 2011, a media report said.
Thakkar, a university student in Sydney studying accounting, was raped and strangled to death in a flat at Croydon here by Stani-Reginald who was her neighbour.
Stani-reginald then put her body in a suitcase and threw it in a canal at a park in Meadowbank. He was arrested two days later after some construction workers found the suitcase.
He later pleaded guilty for the murder.
“The offender strangled her, an extraordinary cruel act,” the Sydney Morning Herald quoted sentencing judge Derek Price as saying in his ruling Friday.
“The last moments of her life must have been terrifying. This was a terrible way to die.”
Police reportedly found over 10,000 website links in the convict’s laptop relating to serial killers and rapists.
On the day he murdered Thakkar, he had searched the internet with the keywords “choke hold” and also viewed pornography.
He then raped her and strangled her with a cable.
“There’s documented evidence that he had been planning the murder for a number of years prior,” judge Price said, adding that the callousness of the manner in which the act was carried out was evident from the way Stani-Reginald stuffed the body in a suitcase, booked a taxi, and took it to Meadowbank.
Prosecutors had asked for life sentence for the perpetrator.