PTI

London, May 28: An NRI woman from Punjab, her 20 year-old daughter and the latter's boyfriend have been convicted of conspiring to murder her husband, who survived two brutal knife attacks in the British city of Coventry.

In a real-life drama involving a scheming wife and the betrayal of Jaskarnjit Singh Sanghera by his own family, a court in Coventry was told that 40-year-old Balwinder had engaged a hitman to kill her husband after she ran up huge debts.

Balwinder, her daughter Amrita and her boyfriend Inderpal Singh Dail, 23, last week pleaded guilty to conspiring to murder Sanghera and were sentenced to jail for ten, eight and five years respectively.

On the night of November 2, 2005, 42-year-old Sanghera went to bed as usual with his wife at their home in Coventry. At 2.20 am his front door was smashed open and a knifeman burst into the bedroom and stabbed him 25 times.

Sanghera sustained serious injuries, but survived. It was the second time within months that he had been stabbed.

Balwinder told police she suspected that the attacks could have been linked to a land dispute in India, and even suggested that it was connected to a woman her husband had an affair with a long time ago.

But police became suspicious, and after investigations, found Balwinder had run up debts of about 50,000 pounds that her husband knew nothing about and had taken out a life insurance policy in his name.