Doctor sentenced for assaulting sleeping girl on flight from Seattle

NEWARK, N.J. – A doctor who admitted assaulting a sleeping girl on a flight from Seattle to New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport last summer is now headed to prison.

Vijaykumar Krishnappa received a 90-day sentence Friday. He had pleaded guilty in November.

Prosecutors say the 29-year-old physician intentionally touched the girl near her groin over her leggings without her consent. The girl, who he did not know, was sleeping in the seat next to him on the July flight.

The Indian national was studying medicine in the U.S. at the time under a fellowship for doctors from foreign counties.