A POSSESSIVE husband who tried to choke his wife four months before strangling her has been jailed for at least 17 years and three months for her murder.
Nanthagopal Lechmana, 37, was found guilty by a NSW Supreme Court jury last year of murdering his wife, Pharzana Nanthagopal, 27, in February 2008, at their Parramatta flat.
The jury rejected a submission that he was guilty of the less serious offence of manslaughter due to the partial defence of his suffering severe depression.
In jailing him today, Justice Megan Latham found his depression had a limited bearing on the killing, in that it exacerbated “the traits of a pre-existing rigid and possessive personality”.
The couple were married for about six years, but their relationship had deteriorated and Ms Nanthagopal told her husband she wanted to separate.
Lechmana wrongly believed his wife was having an affair with a work colleague, the judge said.
“Four months before the offence, the victim raised the prospect of a separation, as a result of which he placed both hands around her throat and attempted to choke her,” Justice Latham said.
He stopped but then approached her with a knife and orange, saying: “How would you feel if I put this knife in your stomach?”.
Despite a colleague advising her to report her husband to police, Ms Nanthagopal instead encouraged him to go to counselling with her.
She also told his mother of her concerns about his mental health.
In a letter to the court, Lechmana had apologised to those who have been “affected by the accident”, adding that his wife had “drifted from the boundaries of marriage”.
The judge concluded that Lechmana began his assault upon his slightly built wife in the bedroom by striking her to the face.
At some stage, he pulled her by the hair to prevent her escape, then applied “consistent pressure to the victim’s neck, whilst she fought to remove his hands”.
Despite it being obvious to him that “she was in mortal danger if he did not loosen his grip”, Lechmana persisted.
“He understood the consequences of his conduct, because he had previously attempted to choke her and he had, in effect, threatened to kill her,” the judge said.
“The offender’s violence towards his wife on the night she died was not the act of a man so deep in the grip of a depression that he was unable to control himself.”
Rather, it was the act of a man who could see that his wife no longer loved him and there was nothing he could do to stop her leaving him.
The judge set a maximum term of 23 years.
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