Brit Indian Sikh found guilty of wife’s murder over her asking for divorce

LONDON - The husband of a mother-of-two Brit Indian woman, who had her hand severed as she was killed in a street attack in Greenford last November, has been found guilty of her murder.

Geeta Aulakh was killed with a machete on the orders of Harpreet Aulakh because she had left him and was seeking a divorce.

Harpreet had paid henchmen 5,000 pounds to kill her as she went to pick up their two sons, aged seven and eight, from a child minder, an Old Bailey jury said.

Prosecutor Aftab Jafferjee had claimed that “no one else in the world could possibly have wished this utterly innocent and hard-working woman and mother any harm.”

“It was the stigma of divorce, particularly for her, which let the marriage limp on. She ultimately decided that she had a life, which she wanted to lead, but away from him,” the Sun quoted Jafferjee, as saying.

“Harpreet Aulakh’s reaction displayed a chilling belief - almost certainly culturally rooted - in male unaccountability. How dare a mere woman - as he and other like-minded accomplices would view her - challenge that smug chauvinist mind-set?” he asked.

Jafferjee also described how Harpreet recruited other accused - Sher Singh, Harpreet Singh and Jaswant Dhillon- to carry out the “hideous crime” and went to a pub which had CCTV so that he could provide an alibi on the day of the killing.

Harpreet was found guilty of murder along with Sher Singh and Dhillon.

Jurors were still considering the case of Harpreet Singh.

Earlier, the court had heard that Harpreet warned his wife’s sister that he would kill her because he thought she was having an affair.

A few months before her death Geeta told a colleague her husband had told her ‘if he could not have her then no one else would’.

On September 29 in 2009, just a month before her death she had written a Facebook message to her husband saying, “I have never hated anyone in my life, but you.”

She had reportedly signed her divorce petition on September 7 citing verbal abuse, accusations of infidelity and domestic violence.(ANI)