JAIPAUL Hitlall called ‘Latta’ was, on Tuesday, sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment, by High Court Judge Simone Morris-Ramlall, for raping a woman in 2016.

Hitlall, a fisherman of Anna Catherina, Sea View, West Coast Demerara was found guilty by a 12-member jury of the charge which read that, on December 29, 2016, at Cornelia Ida, WCD, he raped the woman.

According to reports, the woman, while on the seashore, was attacked by Hitlall and raped. He then dragged her to a boat and raped her again.

Hitlall, after realising that he knew the victim, begged her not to report him to the police and she agreed. The next day, the victim reported the matter to the police and Hitlall was arrested.

It was during the investigation that Hitlall was arrested for the murder of 65-year-old Bibi Keniez, who was killed after being raped at her Cornelia Ida, West Coast Demerara home on October 2, 2016. The woman’s lifeless body was found in a hammock with almost a dozen stab wounds. Investigators believed that the woman was raped before she was stabbed to death, because she was not wearing any underwear and her skirt was pulled up to her chest.