File photo of the convict, Ali Ansari.
A sessions court in Mumbai today gave life imprisonment to a man who raped a Spanish woman in her apartment at knife-point in Mumbai's Bandra a year ago.
The 27-year-old musician had alleged that she was raped twice at knife-point at her rented apartment by a burglar late in the night on November 5, 2012.
The next day the police had arrested a man called Ali Ansari, who they said had a history of crime. They charged him with rape, robbery, criminal intimidation and trespass in the case.
The woman had deposed during the trial through video conference from Berlin.
On November 5 last year, the accused had allegedly tried to rob a bungalow on Perry Cross Road, but was chased away. The police said he then broke into and robbed the fourth-floor apartment in another building, before entering the Spanish woman's third-floor apartment.
The woman was asleep. The intruder, the police said, picked up a knife from her kitchen, asked her to hand over gold and money, and then raped her twice before she managed to escape and lock herself in a bathroom.
The police was called in by neighbours who heard the woman's cries for help.
The woman, who had come to Mumbai to learn classical music, had a roommate, a photographer, who was away in Kerala when she was attacked.
Soon after the incident, she returned to Germany where she is based and where she works as a music director.