Uber cab driver Shiv Kumar Yadav (Press Trust of India photo)
An Uber cab driver held guilty of raping a passenger last year in an incident that sparked a nationwide debate on women's safety, has been sentenced to life in prison.
Shiv Kumar Yadav, 32, had committed a "very brutal crime" and a strong message needs to go out, argued the prosecution in a special fast track court in Delhi today.
In a 99-page judgement last month, the court had said the 25-year-old woman was reminded of the horrific Delhi gang-rape in 2012 when the driver of the US-based service provider threatened to insert an iron rod in her body.
The court held that the threat was very real in the mind of the woman when the driver had threatened her.
Yadav was then found guilty of a series of charges including "endangering a woman's life".
Today, his wife and two daughters were present in court during the sentencing. His wife wept and fainted after the judge announced a life term. Yadav's lawyer had asked for a lighter sentence for him claiming that he was his family's only earner.
The woman, a financial executive working in Gurgaon near Delhi, has said that after she dozed off in the cab on the evening of December 5 last year, the driver took her to an unknown location, which later turned out to be a spot just a few kilometers from her home in west
Delhi.
Shiv Kumar Yadav was arrested two days later.