London: A "controlling" Indian who strangled his ex-wife with her dupatta and then discarded her body by some rubbish bins stuffed into a suitcase was given a life sentence on Friday with a minimum term of 18 years.

After the verdict, police released chilling footage of Ashwin Daudia, 51, a machine operator, pulling a suitcase containing the body of 46-year-old Kiran Daudia, trussed up inside with cable ties.

At Leicester Crown Court, the stinging words of Judge Timothy Spencer QC painted a portrait of an arranged marriage gone tragically wrong - and that, too, in a country where Indian family life is held up as a model for the rest of society.

Rejecting Ashwin's defence that he had merely "lost control" on January 16 last year, the judge described his actions as "stripping her of any remaining dignity, even in death".

She was "barely over five feet tall and of slight build. She was never any physical match for you. She was injured and bleeding. You must have overpowered her easily and had her at your mercy ... of mercy you showed none. You cleaned away a great deal of blood, but left the traces within the reaches of forensic science."

The Gujarati couple, who married in India in 1998, were divorced in 2014 but Ashwin refused to vacate the house he had continued to share in "a pressure cooker atmosphere" with Kiran and their two sons, Vivek and Shivam, now 26 and 18.

Matters came to a head when the house was sold to Kiran's sister, Priti, in order to force Ashwin to move out with a payoff of £38,000.

Kiran, a part time call centre worker, was killed when she returned home from work on the day the house sale was concluded.

Kiran's body was kept in the back garden until dark when Ashwin was caught on CCTV wheeling out a suitcase.

The judge told Ashwin that on January 16, "you reached the final stages in this unfolding tragedy. Your selfish pride fuelled your anger and your anger increased throughout the day. You saw it was some final humiliation or disrespect which you weren't prepared to let go. You were set on violent vengeance.

"You have deprived this world of a vibrant woman...and you've deprived your sons of their mother. This day was supposed to represent a new dawn, a fresh start for them - it now represents the start of a continuing nightmare."