Vancouver: A Sikh taxi driver here has been sentenced to life for killing his wife after a heated argument nearly two years ago.

Jatinder Waraich, 25, had stabbed Navreet 39 times in their Surrey city basement, the provincial British Columbia Supreme Court said while handing down the sentence on Friday. He will not be eligible for parole for 10 years.

Waraich told the court that he and his wife often argued over money problems. He said Navreet wanted him to stop paying mortgage on his parents' home and also forge documents to help her family immigrate to Canada.

He said that on Oct 29, 2006, his wife threatened to leave for India with their five-month-old son and later file for divorce. In a fit of anger, he said he could recall stabbing her only once before blacking out. However, the autopsy report said that Navreet was stabbed 39 times.

Navreet's father, Dilbag Singh Gill, who is in custody of her two-year-old son, said at the verdict that he wanted to go back to India to raise him. Waraich and Navreet came to Canada in 2003. Like most new immigrants, they also struggled financially and emotionally to come to terms with life in the new society.

Their landlady Shalinder and her daughter Tejinder Basran had told the media at the time of the crime that when they went downstairs to calm the couple, they found Navreet stabbed and bleeding profusely.

They recalled how the dying woman pleaded with them to save her life as her knife-wielding husband stood by. Navreet was one of the three Indo-Canadian wives who were killed by their husbands in Surrey city in October 2006.

Source : IANS