Sify

Gothenburg, Jul 25: Venkateshwar Reddy Pullagurla, the 25-year-old Indian student in Sweden, was on Wednesday sentenced to 11 years in jail followed by deportation and a lifetime ban on entering this country, for the rape and murder of a fellow student with whom he was in love.

Passing a written sentence, Justice Staffan Ridholm of the Swedish High Court declared: "Pullagurla has shown greatest ruthlessness and cruelty by holding tightly shut Jelena Ivanesivic's mouth and nose under an inordinately long period of time, causing her death through strangulation."
 
Ivanesivic's stark naked and handcuffed body was found in the cellar-toilet of a palatial mansion in Langedrag, the exclusive residential area of the Swedish west coast town of Gothenburg, on April 13. She had lain there dead since April 8.

Pullagurla was accused on three counts. The first count was drugging and raping a 20-year-old girl (name not disclosed according to Swedish law) on the night of January 28, 2006, at the King's Head restaurant in Gothenburg where he worked, for which he has been found guilty and will serve a term in prison concurrently with the term for murder.

The second count was the attempted rape of more than one teenage girl, after intoxicating and drugging them at the Moulin Rouge nightclub here on the night of March 3-4, 2006, for which he has been acquitted.

The third count was of the premeditated murder of Ivanesivic, 20, under unduly violent circumstances.