New Delhi: A court here on Thursday sentenced Mahmood Farooqui, the co-director of acclaimed 2010 Hindi film “Peepli Live”, to seven years jail after finding him guilty of raping an American woman.

The court also imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on the 44-year-old filmmaker and said the amount be given to the victim, failing which he would have to undergo an additional imprisonment of three months.

It also tasked the Delhi Legal Service Authority to decide appropriate compensation for the woman. The court had on July 30 held him guilty of raping the American woman last year at his house in a drunken state.

During the arguments on sentence earlier, Delhi Police had sought life imprisonment for the filmmaker, saying the crime perpetrated on the foreigner has brought disrepute to India.

Farooqui’s counsel Nitya Ramakrishnan had said as the filmmaker suffered from bipolar disorder and has fully cooperated in the case so he should be given a chance to reform.

Seeking stringent punishment for Farooqui, complainant’s counsel Vrinda Grover had said, The foreigner (victim) was here for research work but was raped by a person she knew, who was her friend and whom she had trusted.

A chargesheet was filed against the filmmaker alleging he had raped the research scholar at his Sukhdev Vihar house in south Delhi on March 28 2015, after inviting her over for dinner.

On reaching Farooqui’s house, the woman claimed that he was heavily intoxicated and later forced himself on her. Farooqui had however denied all allegations saying he was falsely implicated.

The woman had, during the in-camera proceedings, alleged that Farooqui had raped her and later apologised to her in several e-mails exchanged between them. Later, however, Farooqui had denied the allegations against him, saying he was falsely implicated by the woman