Calls are growing for a retrial of a Nepalese man serving a life sentence for a 1997 murder in Tokyo in the wake of a fresh DNA test.
Govinda Prasad Mainali, 44, was convicted of killing a 39-year-old woman after paying her for sex and stealing around ¥40,000 in cash. But the new DNA test showed that the semen found inside the victim's body was not Mainali's. Instead, it matches the DNA found in a piece of body hair collected at the apartment where the woman was murdered.
Mainali maintained his innocence throughout the trial but was found guilty on the basis that it seemed unlikely that a third person had been in the unoccupied apartment with the victim.