India-origin man who killed wife for gay lover jailed for life in UK
London, Dec 5: An Indian-origin pharmacist was sentenced to life imprisonment by a UK court on Wednesday for murdering his wife to use a two-million pound life insurance payout to build a new life with his gay lover in Australia.
Mitesh Patel, 37, was told that he must serve a minimum term of 30 years behind bars before being considered for parole over the murder of Jessica Patel, who was found dead at the couple's home in Middlesbrough, northern England, in May.
He had denied killing his wife and claimed that she was a victim of a burglary at their home.
However, the prosecution proved that Patel staged a burglary scene after injecting his 34-year-old wife with insulin and then strangling her with a plastic supermarket shopping bag.
"You have no remorse for your actions. Any pity you have is for yourself," said Justice James Goss, during a sentencing hearing at Teesside Crown Court on Wednesday.
In a statement on behalf of Jessica's family, her grieving younger sister Divya told the court: "The one thing we hope and prayed for above anything else was that in her final moments she did not suffer".
"The cruel reality is that she did in fact suffer, she knew exactly who her killer was, and he mercilessly ignored her attempts to fight for her own life as he ended it.
"We can only imagine the fear and panic she must have felt knowing herself this was it. Thinking of that moment makes our hearts so heavy," she said.
According to court reports, she then addressed her brother-in-law directly to say that her sister would finally be free of him 'forever'.
"As will she rest in heaven, you will rot in hell," she said, adding that he could have divorced her, taken everything he wanted but did not have to take her life.
"He had no right to take this evil, cruel and malicious step," Divya said.
During the trial, it emerged that the accused had planned to claim a two-million pound (USD 2.5 million) life insurance payout and move to Sydney with lover Dr Amit Patel, described as his "soulmate".
The couple had plans to use Jessica's frozen embryos to then have a baby. Prosecutors said Mitesh's motivation for the murder was to escape his strict Hindu upbringing and flee the UK to be with his lover in Australia and start a new family.
The jury was told that his wife had been aware for six years that her husband was in love with another man and was having casual sex with men he met on the gay dating app Grindr.
The judge described Mitesh as a "selfish" man, whose lies were uncovered by police on examination of the iPhone health app, which tracks any user's steps throughout the day, on his and his wife's phones.
The jury heard the cheating husband had made internet searches dating back years, including "I need to kill my wife", "insulin overdose", "plot to kill my wife, do I need a co-conspirator?", "hiring hitman UK" and "how much methadone will kill you?".
In July 2015, he told his Sydney-based lover Amit: "Her days are marked."
On Tuesday, a jury of six men and six women took three hours of deliberation to give their guilty verdict.
Jessica was found at her home on The Avenue in Linthorpe suburb of Middlesbrough with "serious injuries" and pronounced dead at the scene on May 14.
The victim, also known as Jess, ran the local chemist's shop on Roman Road in Middlesbrough with her husband, whom she met while studying at university in Manchester.
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After poll debacle, defeated MVA candidates to seek verification of EVM-VVPAT units
Mumbai(PTI): The Maha Vikas Aghadi candidates who faced defeat in the recent Maharashtra assembly polls have decided to seek verification of the EVM-Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails (VVPATs) units in their segments, a leader of the opposition alliance said.
Many losing candidates of the opposition Shiv Sena (UBT) pointed fingers at the functioning of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) during their interaction with party head Uddhav Thackeray on Tuesday.
Thackeray took stock of the lacklustre performance of his party at a meeting held at his residence in Mumbai.
The poll verdict last week saw the Mahayuti coalition, comprising the Shiv Sena, BJP, and NCP, retaining power with a massive mandate, pushing the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) to margins.
The Mahayuti won 230 seats and MVA only 46 in the 288-member House.
The Thackeray-led Sena (UBT) emerged as the largest party in the opposition camp by winning 20 seats, followed by Congress which bagged 16 constituencies, while the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) sits at the bottom with a tally of 10 seats.
Talking to PTI on Tuesday, Congress leader Arif Naseem Khan, who lost the election from Chandivali assembly constituency in Mumbai, said he held a discussion with Thackeray, who also said he has got complaints from his party workers that EVMs could have been tampered.
"We are getting complaints from different parts of the state expressing doubts over the results. In a democracy, complaints need to be verified and many of us, including myself, (who faced defeat) are in the process of applying for the verification," Khan said.
As per the Supreme Court's judgement on April 26 this year, the burnt memory/microcontroller in 5 per cent of the EVMs - the control unit, ballot unit and the VVPAT - per assembly constituency shall be checked and verified by a team of engineers from manufacturers of the EVMs, after the announcement of results, for any tampering or modification, he said.
A written request for this has to be made by candidates who are in the second or third position behind the highest polled candidate.
Such a request has to be made within seven days of declaration of the result, Khan said.
A candidate making the request will have to pay the expenses of Rs 41,000 which will be refunded in case the machine is found to be tampered with, he said.
The microcontroller is a one-time programmable chip embedded into the three units of EVM-Ballot Unit, Control Unit and the VVPAT - at the time of manufacturing, as per the SC.
A Sena (UBT) MLA from Mumbai has claimed there were discrepancies between the votes polled and the votes counted in the EVMs.
"Almost all candidates raised doubts over the EVMs," the legislator said.
