Harmohinder who was found guilty of killing Sana (below)

London, Nov. 30: A brilliant and attractive Sikh girl, who got straight As in her A-level school exams and appeared set for a promising career, was instead starting a life sentence today for stabbing her lover’s pregnant wife 43 times with a kitchen knife.

Harmohinder Sanghera, 23, known to her friends as “Mindy”, began a passionate affair with a “playboy” businessman, Sair Ali, now 25, after they were introduced by friends two years ago. But as is still the way in sections of the orthodox Pakistani community in Britain, Sair was married off to Sana, his much younger cousin in Pakistan to whom he had been engaged ever since she was nine.

Sana came to Britain and led a lonely life at her home in Bury, Manchester, trying to be a dutiful wife, while her husband gallivanted around with other girls, visited nightclubs and slept reluctantly with his 17-year-old bride, who became pregnant, and much more willingly with his mistress.

Sair, who runs a mobile phone business, would keep assignations with Harmohinder in £135-a-night rooms at a four-star hotel to keep their continuing relationship secret from their families. Harmohinder, a pretty girl, is the youngest daughter of a respected Punjabi couple living in a £400,000 house in Solihull in the West Midlands. Her father Gurnek is thought to be a manager for Royal Mail while her mother Satinder works at Marks & Spencer.

Having achieved straight As at King Edward the Sixth Grammar School, she was close to completing a course at Birmingham University’s School of Dentistry and had a posting lined up at one of the city’s top practices. But she waited for an opportunity one Friday morning in May this year when Sair was out to prayers, tricked Sana into letting her in, grabbed a 17cm kitchen knife and finished off her love rival, the court heard, making sure the blade was driven deep into the victim’s belly.

Any baby, she felt, should have been hers. Later, in her defence, she tried to pretend that Sana had been the victim of “self harm”. But the prosecution proved that the “ferocious and sustained” attack was “born of jealousy and desperation”. Harmohinder will have to serve at least 14 years before she is considered for parole.

In sentencing, Judge John Saunders said he had taken into account “the degree of planning and premeditation, the fact that Sana was pregnant and known to the defendant as pregnant”.

Detective Superintendent Jane Antrobus, from Greater Manchester Police, said: “This is an absolutely tragic case. Sanghera was jealous and desperate and went to incredible lengths to try to save her relationship, the result of which was this horrific murder. These terrible circumstances have wrecked two families – both Sana and Sanghera’s family have lost their daughters. I know it has been very difficult for Sana’s family, particularly her mum, to hear about the circumstances surrounding her only daughter’s death and the loss of her unborn grandson.”

As she was comforted by relatives, Sana’s mother, Maryam Fatima, said: “I wanted to say thank you to the respectable judge, jury, prosecution and to all investigating departments. They gave us justice. Sana will be happy today. Sana will smile today. Sana will be in peace today.”

One question that is only now being examined is why Sair felt he could not marry Harmohinder. She was convinced her future lay with him, and talked of converting to Islam. She started to abstain from alcohol, began wearing a headscarf and eating halal food, today’s Daily Mail has disclosed.

But Sair planted the seeds of tragedy when he told Harmohinder his parents “would never accept a Sikh daughter-in-law”. In court Sair admitted he had failed to consummate his marriage on his wedding night, and that he would take Viagra before having sex with Sana but by the spring of this year she was pregnant.

Harmohinder, meanwhile, was going crazy with passion. She would light candle after candle when Sair was away, never letting the flame die out, demanded that he phone her and speak to her until she fell asleep, and wrote to him saying she wanted to be his “golden girl”.

At other times she would make abusive comments about Sana or demand to know whether they had had sex the night before. She even secretly entered a temporary Islamic marriage with Sair but it was not enough for Harmohinder.

In one of her letters to him she wrote: “I think I am going crazy. Maybe I am a psycho, crazy, or just a fool, or maybe all of those things.”