A 55-year-old depressed man who brutally murdered his wife then tried to kill himself by jumping off a cliff has been given a jail sentence of 10 years.
Warning: Graphic content
Loughborough Magistrates' Court was told that Kaushik Solanki murdered his wife Manisha in Leicester on April 14 last year. The marriage had been a happy one for 25 years, but it started deteriorating in 2016, the court was told. The marriage became "toxic" due to the coronavirus lockdown, reported BBC.
Leicester Live reported that Solanki denied killing Manisha, but pleaded guilty to her manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. He said that years of trouble in the marriage, which made worse by the lockdown, led to his mental health deteriorating. The Crown Prosecution Service then decided to drop the original murder charge.
On Friday at Loughborough Magistrates' Court, the couple's two sons read victim personal statements. They explained how they had supported their father after their mother's death. Nainesh, 23, said that both of his parents and were "good, kind and caring people." They both "loved their work supporting disabled service users," but as lockdown started and healthcare services started to close, his parents became "trapped within their own environment." They couldn't give each other a break, leading to a "cycle of toxic behavior."
Jaishiva, a 26-year-old doctor, said that his father had "spent days weeping in pain" after his mother's death. The couple's sons said that they had seen their mom being physically abusive to their father. But they had never seen their dad hit their mother.
Defending, Siobhan Grey said that the husband tended to "bottle everything up inside" until he eventually "snapped" and took his wife's life.
Solanki's wife was beaten to death with a shortened hockey stick. She had "no less than 11 significant blunt force trauma wounds" to her scalp, and her fingers were broken where she had tried to shield herself from the blows. The court was told that later Solanki decapitated her dead body by sawing off her head. He also tried to take his own life the next day. He drove to Hunstanton in Norfolk and jumped from a cliff. He landed on rocks that were described in court as being "jagged."
His injuries included fractures to all of his limbs, and he also had a traumatic brain haemorrhage. He now uses a wheelchair. He is expected to make a full recovery within about 18 months, according to Mirror.
