London: An Indian-origin woman who bludgeoned her mother-in-law to death in a frenzied rage using a rolling pin has been sentenced in jail for and will have to spend at least 11 years in jail before being considered for parole.
Rajvinder Kaur, 37, received the life sentence at the Winchester Crown Court after she was found guilty of murdering Baljit Kaur Buttar, 56, in the attack following six months of tension between the two.
She had denied murder, but admitted manslaughter, claiming she had been provoked because Buttar, who had come over from India on holiday for six months, had been unkind and called her names constantly, The Independent reported on Thursday.
She had also claimed Buttar had angrily lashed out with a broom handle when Kaur had walked into the bathroom as she had a shower and at that point she had grabbed the rolling pin from outside the door and attacked her.
Justice Burnett, who told Kaur that 11 years would be the minimum she would serve until eligible for parole, said: "You completely lost your self-control and the attack that followed was a frenzied one".
He told Kaur that her attempts to cover up the crime at the family home in Southampton by washing her blood-spattered clothes and getting her son to discover his grandmother's body in what her own barrister described as a scene of "carnage" was "cruel and calculated and defies understanding".
But he said he accepted she had been provoked up to a point by her relative's insults and that the attack, which included 20 blows, was "quite out of character". You exploded in a rage", he said.
Kaur had initially said that her mother-in-law had slipped in the bath and maintained the lie through 14 police interviews until her first trial.
Then halfway through, she said she remembered killing Buttar, forcing the case to be halted and a retrial ordered.
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