Three youths were yesterday handed down life sentences for brutally raping and murdering a 56-year-old ragpicker in Ghatkopar on New Year’s Eve in 2013. On January 1 last year, PSI Vishnu Kalekar received a call at Pantnagar police station, informing him that the dead body of an elderly woman had been found at Rishi bike bazaar, near Ghatkopar-Andheri Link Road.

Cops reached the spot and found the woman’s head had been brutally bashed in with a rock. The body was sent to Rajawadi Hospital for post-mortem, which revealed that she had been gang-raped and murdered by blunt trauma to the head. The 56-year-old woman was a ragpicker who lived on the streets in Pantnagar. Her son and his wife reside in Mumbra.