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Husband gets 19 years for trying to kill wife with ceremonial sword

A worker at a Black Country Sikh temple was today jailed for 19 years after trying to kill his wife with a ceremonial sword.

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Harjit Singh launched the attack as Nirmal Kaur slept fracturing her skull and cutting her head with a blow from the weapon. And when that failed to kill her he tried to strangle the woman he had married in India 14 years ago.

The 46-year-old tied up his beard, stripped naked and started to run a shower so he could remove blood and other tell-tale signs of his involvement in the attack.

He intended to go to the temple where he was due to start work at 4am - leaving the back door open – and provide an alibi for when the body was found later by their daughter.

Singh intended to blame a nonexistent intruder for the crime.

He deliberately closed the door to the room where the girl – then aged 10 – slept opposite her parent's bedroom in the hope she would not be disturbed by the sound of the attack at their home in Edward Street, West Bromwich, alongside the Guru Nanak Gurdwara where he was employed.

But the plan unravelled when she woke and disturbed the murder bid, which came two days after an argument over money between the couple who lived free of charge at the house because his work at the temple was unpaid.

Nirmal Kaur needed 16 stitches to the head wound as well as suffering a fractured skull and also had fractures to the cartilage in her neck from the bid to strangle her following the attack in the early hours of October 22.

Singh – who was convicted of attempted murder by a Wolverhampton Crown Court jury yesterday afternoon following a trial – showed no emotion as Judge Nicholas Webb said: "It is unknown what your precise motive was but the high probability is that you and she had argued about money and, fed up, you determined to get rid of her.

"At around 2.30am you kissed your wife on the lips and struck her once to the head almost certainly with your ceremonial sword.

"That did not kill her, still less it did not render her unconscious, but fractured her skull.

"She screamed and your daughter heard those screams and entered the bedroom and saw her father on top of her mother trying to strangle her."

The judge said Singh – who still stuck to the story that an intruder was to blame – had banked on his wife and daughter being too frightened by the 'cultural consequences of making allegations against him', and assumed they would back his lies. They did initially, but quickly told the truth of what had really happened.

Judge Webb concluded as Singh stood in the dock with arms folded: "You have shown absolutely no sign of remorse. Your wife has lost all trust in you and now fears you could kill her at any time."

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