Japan prosecutors say Govinda Prasad Mainali is innocent

   

THT ONLINE

KATHMANDU: Prosecutors at the Tokyo High Court on Monday said that Govinda Prasad Mainali (45), who was convicted of killing a Japanese woman after raping her in 1997, was not guilty, making his acquittal certain, Kyodo News Agency reported.

Reading a document at the court in the retrial of the case, the prosecutors said that Mainali was "innocent" and "the possibility of another person being the culprit cannot be denied" based on current evidence.

"We are extremely sorry for keeping him detained for a very long time," Takayuki Aonuma, deputy head of the Tokyo High Public Prosecutors Office, said in a statement.

Mainali, who served 15 years in jail, had filed a plea for retrial in 2005. He was freed in June this year after DNA test results showed that he was not the killer. He was subsequently deported to Nepal.

The DNA in a sample taken from the victim’s nails did not match that of Mainali but it matched that of semen found inside the victim's body leading to the Tokyo High Court granting him a retrial, according to the Kyodo News Agency.

A permanent resident of Ilam district in eastern Nepal. Mainali had moved to Japan to work at a restaurant.

In December 2000, he was convicted of the 1997 murder of former Tokyo Electric Power Co. employee and was sentenced to life in prison. The verdict was finalised in October 2003.

The reinvestigation was made possible by an April 2010 revision of the criminal law that abolished the statute of limitations in capital crimes, according to The Japan Times.