After being reported missing by her mother with whom she lived, her body was discovered on March 19, 1997[1] in a vacant apartment in the Maruyamachō neighborhood of Shibuya, Tokyo[3] where she engaged in prostitution.
Although he was acquitted in the first trial from lack of conclusive evidence, he was subsequently convicted on appeal by the Tokyo High Court[5] and given an indefinite prison sentence on December 22, 2000.
Mainali went on to spend fifteen years in prison, until exculpatory sets of DNA evidence emerged linking an unidentified third man who had sexual and violent contact with the victim in the immediate hours before her death.
Swabs of semen recovered from inside the victim's body, which the prosecution claimed were too small a sample to analyze using existing technologies at the time, finally underwent DNA testing in July 2011, and ruled out Mainali as its source.
[16] Noted nonfiction writer Shin'ichi Sano [ja] wrote a bestselling book, Tokyo Electric Power Co. Office Lady Murder Case (pub.