Lovely Varughese also filed a case against Carbondale, its police department and O'Guin alleging negligence and seeking $5 million in damages.

The local prosecutor, Michael Carr, who initially took up the case removed himself from it after failing to get a grand jury to charge Bethune.

Special Prosecutor David Robinson, who was appointed to take it up, tried the case and got Bethune convicted.

The charge against Bethune said that even though Pravin might have frozen to death it "was a natural and foreseeable consequence of that independent felonious conduct" of the aggravated assault by Bethune.

The prosecution said that Bethune had given Pravin a lift and allegedly went looking for cocaine, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

A dispute ensued over money when Pravin made him stop the vehicle and got out.

Bethune then attacked him and took the money, leaving Pravin injured and in early stages of hypothermia, the newspaper said quoting the special prosecutor.

A state police trooper who passed by questioned Bethune but let him off after he told him that he had picked up a hitch-hiker who tried to rob him and that he had chased him into the woods.

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