Manisha Patel and Niraj Dave shared a single bed, bought a car, studied for the same course, went on dates to restaurants and movies, and made life plans together.
After the lovers decided they were not suited for marriage, they had a drunken night at a hotel in Dubai that resulted in pregnancy, and Patel had an abortion in mid-March 2012.
In the middle of a distressing time for Patel, Mr Dave told her about a new woman in his life, Purvi Joshi, who was moving from India to Sydney to become his wife.
Over the following months, Patel helped Mr Dave find a sunny flat for the new couple and handed over the keys to a black convertible they had bought together so his fiancee could drive it.
She stood by as Mr Dave grew distant, and Ms Joshi moved with him into the flat in Kyeemagh, in Sydney’s south.
On a cold night in July 2013, Patel went to the flat and fatally stabbed Ms Joshi as she lay in bed, while Mr Dave was working on a night shift as a security guard at Sydney Airport.
“Ms Joshi had become the focus of [Patel’s] resentment. She unknowingly walked into a psycho-drama not of her own making,” Justice Helen Wilson said in the NSW Supreme Court on Monday.
Patel, 32, stood hunched over in the wooden court dock and stifled her emotions as she was sentenced to a minimum of 18 years’ jail for Ms Joshi’s murder, which Justice Wilson described as brutal and planned.
A jury found Patel guilty of Ms Joshi’s murder in July.
Patel moved from India to Australia in 2008 to be with a man her family had arranged for her to marry, but that marriage broke up and she met Mr Dave online.
The breakdown of their lengthy sexual relationship, her failure to find a suitable husband, and the abortion were a source of shame and sadness, Justice Wilson said.
Ms Joshi and Mr Dave’s relationship came to “crystallise” everything that was wrong in her lonely life.
“She was a stranger in a strange land, her marriage had failed … she had undergone the tragedy of a termination and for all her claims in her evidence that Mr Dave meant nothing to her, he was of crucial importance,” Justice Wilson said.
The judge said Ms Joshi’s death was a serious example of murder, and that defensive injuries showed there had been violent struggle.
“[Ms Joshi] must have felt both overwhelmed with confusion … and overcome with terror. At some point she must have known she was fighting for her life and felt it ebbing away.”
Justice Wilson set a maximum term of 24 years, with the parole period due to expire in August 2031.
Patel waved to her sister before letting out a muffled sob as she was led downstairs to the cells.
Online Source