Ending years of legal tussle and a prolonged manhunt across India, Maninderpal Singh Kohli was on Tuesday sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in London after convicting him of the rape-and-murder of 17-year-old British schoolgirl Hannah Foster in 2003.

The 41-year-old former delivery driver for a sandwich firm will spend a minimum of 24 years behind bars before he could be considered for parole.

Amid dramatic scenes at Winchester Crown court, Kohli was convicted by a 12-member jury of bundling the teenager into the back of his van, raping and strangling her before dumping her body in a ditch in Southampton.

The jury, including four women, delivered its unanimous verdict after deliberating for five and a half hours.

The sensational case had hit headlines in Britain and India where Kohli, a father of two, had fled after the murder.

He changed his name there but was finally apprehended in Darjeeling and extradited to Britain in July 2007 following a media campaign orchestrated by Hannah's parents and the Hampshire police.

Kohli had claimed he was innocent and that he had been abducted, blindfolded and tied up on the night of Hannah's death and forced to have sex with the teenager.

During the six-week trial, he painted a picture of himself as a victim of a revenge attack orchestrated by his former colleague. Kohli said he owed his colleague 16,000 pounds and had an affair with his wife.

Foster was walking a short distance home after a night out when she disappeared in March 2003. Kohli snatched the teenager from a street yards from her home in Southampton after she had spent an evening with friends.

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