India Mumbai gang rape: Four get life in jail Published duration 21 March 2014

image copyright AFP image caption Three of the men sentenced on Friday have also been convicted of the gang rape of a photojournalist

A court in the Indian city of Mumbai has sentenced four men to life in prison for the gang rape of an 18-year-old telephone operator.

The woman was attacked in an abandoned textile mill last July.

Three of those sentenced on Friday have also been convicted of the gang rape of a photojournalist last August. Sentencing in that case will take place on Monday.

Both trials were completed within seven months in a fast track court.

The 22-year-old photojournalist, an intern with a Mumbai-based English magazine, had gone to the Shakti Mills - a former textile mill that now lies abandoned - with a male colleague on a photo assignment when she was attacked. Her colleague was beaten during the assault.

After that case made national headlines, the 18-year-old telephone operator came forward to report that she had been assaulted in the same place a month earlier.

In India, where a rape is recorded every 22 minutes, scrutiny of sexual violence has grown since the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old student on a bus in Delhi in December 2012.

The case sparked off nationwide protests and forced the Indian authorities to introduce tough new anti-rape laws.

Four men were sentenced to death and a juvenile was sent to a correction facility for three years.