24-year-old Akash (his last name has been withheld) has been jailed for life by a court in Auckland, New Zealand for killing his pregnant girlfriend, reports.
Akash, who arrived in New Zealand from India on a student visa, was in an intimate relationship with 22-year-old Gurpreet Kaur.
Kaur’s body was discovered on roadside in Auckland on April 10th this year with several stab wounds and cuts to her body.
Court documents allege she was killed three days earlier, on April 7th.
The court heard that on the day she was stabbed, Akash discovered that the unborn child that Gurpreet was carrying, was not his child.
Crown prosecutor Gareth Kayes told the court that Akash had bought methamphetamine at about 9am that morning and admitted to using some shortly before the murder.
"You stabbed [Kaur] with a knife you had in the car in the scalp, face, neck, chest and abdomen and cut her jugular. You stabbed her five times in the abdomen, the deepest to her mid abdomen," Kayes said.
"Medical evidence suggests she was some 7-10 weeks pregnant and she had not yet told her parents."
Akash then disposed off Kaur's body on the side of the road, the court heard.
It was on 9th April that Akash’s brother called the police saying Akash had confessed to the killing. Police arrested him the next day after finding a blood stain in his car.
On August 17th, Akash pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced on Tuesday morning.
Justice Matthew Palmer was quoted as saying by stuff.co.nz that not only did Akash murder Kaur, but he deprived her family of the potential of another life.
"You knew she was pregnant and stabbed her most deeply and often in [the] abdomen."
The murder was "cruel, brutal, and callous", Justice Palmer said.
Akash will spend at least 17 years in prison and will be deported at the completion of his sentence.
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