Kuldeep Kaur Sidhu, 25, was discovered half naked with a rope around her neck following a fire at her home.Kuldeep Kaur Sidhu, 25, was discovered half naked with a rope around her neck following a fire at her home, reports the Daily Mail, London.
A pregnant newly-wed was found strangled, hanged and burned alongside a fake suicide note accusing her husband of having an affair with a 'white woman', an inquest heard.
Kuldeep Kaur Sidhu, 25, was discovered half naked with a rope around her neck following a fire at her home in Birmingham.
The nursery nurse's killers, who are believed to have attempted to make her murder look like suicide, have never been caught.
Birmingham Coroner's Court heard that the Sikh family of Mrs Sidhu's accountant husband Baljinder were unhappy about their marriage six months earlier because his wife, a Hindu, was from a lower caste. But Mr Sidhu, who denied having an affair, said the couple were happy and had been trying for a baby.
He only discovered his wife was six weeks pregnant from the results of her post mortem, he told the inquest. After her death, police found a fake hand-written suicide note addressed to 'mum and dad' and left on a table in the lounge. It claimed Mrs Sidhu faced 'living hell' and had been 'mentally tortured' at the hands of her husband, then 27.
'We are all drinking and having fun as I want to forget my husband for now who is having an affair with a white woman. I have seen it all with my own eyes. I can't take it any more,' it said. 'Today I am so upset that I do not want to live any more... I have been mentally tortured a lot at this man's hands but I have been unable to tell you.'
A 'good friend' wrote the letter on Mrs Sidhu's behalf, the letter claimed. Its author has never been traced, but handwriting experts ruled out the husband and wife. On May 14 2008, Mrs Sidhu took her rare Samoyed dog Lassie for a walk before returning to her semi-detached home in Quinton, west Birmingham.
Neighbours spotted smoke coming from the house at about 3.30pm and raised the alarm. Firefighters who broke into the house with a sledgehammer found Mrs Sidhu's body 'badly burned with hardly any clothes' at the foot of a flight of stairs, where the fire was allegedly started.
She had been strangled before a rope was tied around her neck and attached to an upstairs banister, it was claimed. When the fire burnt through it, her body fell, the court heard.
Pathologist Dr William Lawler said: 'The most likely explanation... is that the deceased died from manual strangulation. Attempts were then made to simulate death from hanging before the fire was started.'
Bottles of whiskey and rum had been placed in the house since Mr Sidhu left for work at 8am that morning, and their flat-screen television had five cracks in it, the inquest heard.
When Mr Sidhu returned from work shortly before 7pm, he pleaded with police to save his wife's life, saying: 'There must be something we can do. Give her a new heart.
'You b******s should have protected her - we were trying for a baby. I will get the b******s that have done this.'
Sergeant Andrew Taylor, who was at the scene when Mr Sidhu arrived that evening, told the inquest: 'He said his family were not happy with their marriage due to his wife being from a lower caste.' In police interviews, Mr Sidhu denied having an affair and detectives found no evidence of this.
The couple, who met in 2001, cut ties with friends of the opposite sex after they married in November 2007, Mr Sidhu said. The accountant said his wife complained she was being stalked by someone on a bus, and he believed someone had been watching their house out of jealousy.
He added: 'I believe that someone killed her. I don't know why someone would do that.' Detective Sergeant Andrew Houston, of West Midlands Police, told the court the circumstances of her death did not suggest a murder by strangers. He said: 'The scene was elaborately set with Barcardi and whiskey that was foreign to the house.
'The note was foreign to the house. There is no reason why a stranger would go in and set up such an elaborate scene.' Mr Sidhu was arrested over the murder in October 2008, following discrepancies in his accounts of events, the court heard. His mother was also arrested on suspicion of threats to kill following an incident in November 2007. Both were released without charge.
After Mrs Sidhu's death, her father Desh Raj, 51, paid tribute to his daughter, a part-time nursery nurse who would go to her parents' home in Handsworth, Birmingham, for lunch every day. 'It's been very, very hard - we keep thinking about her every day, every minute. I don't know why anybody has done this thing to her - she was a loving girl, really kind and gentle,' he said.
Her brother Amarajit Lal, 30, added: 'She loved children and she hoped to have children herself. She was in the early stages of pregnancy. It's not just one loss for her family - it's two losses.' Coroner Aidan Cotter said he would examine whether Mrs Sidhu had been killed by one or more people and would consider a verdict of unlawful killing if that was the case.
