Shamran Mehmood Raja, suspected of murder, stood before the Val-de-Marne jury court this week. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The man of Pakistani origin, who was 32 years old at the time of the offence, was also permanently banned from entering France. The presiding judge emphasised the “seriousness” of his crime, but also his “attitude even after these crimes”.
According to the prosecution, Shamran Mehmood Raja attacked Sandra Bignet, possibly after she had rejected his advances. […] Throughout the trial, which began on January 24, the defendant denied having strangled Sandra Bignet at the Franprix shop in Quincy-sous-Sénart (Essonne), where she was around noon for a survey as part of her master’s degree in marketing. […] According to the autopsy, the young woman’s body showed no signs of rape, but the accused’s DNA was found under one of the victim’s fingernails and on her jeans in the hip area.
Shamran Mehmood Raja’s uncle, brother and cousin, on the other hand, were given suspended sentences of between one and three years for helping the defendant transport the body, possibly after hiding it for two days in one of the Franprix’s cold rooms.
In fact, the autopsy considers it unlikely that the young woman’s body had been in the chest since the evening of May 9 until it was discovered, as Shamran Mehmood Raja argued: the body was too well preserved not to have been kept at a low temperature. […] 20 minutes