Lokendra Singh has been jailed for up to eight years for attempting to murder his wife Renu Singh. Picture: SUPPLIED.
AFTER enduring a personal hell, spanning two continents and almost three years, Launceston’s Renu Singh felt “numb and blank” on learning the ex-husband who tried to kill her was finally put away.
In an extraordinary story of survival, that saw Renu almost killed in her own bed and later held captive in India, an incredibly “strong” woman is finally able to start putting the past behind her.
Yesterday Justice Robert Pearce ordered Lokendra Singh be jailed for up to eight years for attempting to murder Renu after the couple’s financial problems boiled over.
In doing so he found little substance to claims a purported mental illness had anything to do with Singh committing the horrific crime.
On February 11 2014 in Launceston Singh walked into the bedroom of his sleeping wife and cut her throat three times with a serrated kitchen knife.
As she woke he strangled then attempted to smother her with a pillow.
For reasons unknown he stopped and began to formulate a fake story to conceal his crime before calling an ambulance.
In September 2015 Singh was found guilty by a Launceston jury of attempted murder.
Following the trial Renu, who had endured the ordeal without family, flew home to India to see relatives.
But on arrival she was thrown in jail and her passport confiscated as a result of false complaints to police by Singh’s politically connected family.
Pressure was applied on Renu to reverse her damning testimony about the night Singh tried to kill her.
A legal battle eventually saw her passport returned. Singh now faces charges in India along with several of his relatives.
Back in Launceston Renu yesterday said she now felt safe and strong but was worried about the future when Singh, an Australian citizen, is released as early as February 2019.
“Initially I felt blank and numb,” she told the Mercury.
“I had flashbacks of 2014 when these things happened and what happened to me in India.
“I was happy to see justice and him punished for what he did wrong so I had mixed feelings.”
Yesterday Justice Pearce found Singh, whose sentencing was delayed for more than a year to allow for a psychiatric assessment, was not mentally impaired when he tried to kill his wife but had been “malingering”.
He ordered the 32-year-old serve a non-parole period of five years backdated to February 2014.
He announced a 10 year family violence order preventing Singh from going near Renu from the date of his release.
Originally published as Jail for trying to kill wife
