Delhi Police on Thursday requested a local court to impose death penalty on a man who was found guilty of raping and murdering an 81-year-old widow at her residence here.

Public Prosecutor A.T. Ansari told Additional Sessions Judge Sanjiv Jain that convict Neeraj Saifi did not deserve any sympathy as he was a "menace" to the society.

Ansari said the case was "rarest of rare" and the crime was more brutal than the December 16 Delhi gangrape case.

He said Saifi, a resident of Madhubani in Bihar, who was working as a domestic help in the house of the elderly woman had betrayed her trust as he had been hired to take care of the old lady.

However, 22-year-old Saifi pleaded for leniency citing his young age and poor family background.

The court said it will deliver order on quantum of sentence on February 16.
 

On January 31, the court convicted Saifi of rape, murder and destruction of evidence.

The court had framed the charges against Saifi in September 2014 for killing the elderly woman.

The victim's body was recovered around 9.30 p.m. on July 7, 2014, from the first-floor flat of her four-storey building in south Delhi's Greater Kailash-II area.

According to the police, the woman's post-mortem examination report revealed that she was strangulated with a dupatta, beaten up and later set on fire.

Saifi, who was employed seven months earlier at her home, was arrested soon after the incident.

The woman's husband was a journalist who worked for a reputed Indian news agency and died in 2005.