Alleged wife killer denies poison-pen letter affairs claims

Sarbjit Kaur, 38, had been “desperate” to have children but her husband Gurpreet Singh already had two children from his first marriage and did not want any more, a court heard.

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Sarbjit, who was found strangled at the family home in Wolverhampton in February last year, had confided her unhappiness to her doctor. Her GP notes recorded that she was suicidal and had thought about hanging herself.

She had married the defendant in July 2015, just seven months after the sudden death of his first wife Amandeep whilst on a family holiday to India.

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Singh, 44, is also accused of soliciting Amandeep’s murder by offering one of his workmen £20,000 to pose as a postman and stab her in the neck when she answered the door of their gated property in Rookery Lane, Penn, but he fled the country without carrying out the attack, it was said.

Sarbjit saw her GP on January 15 last year and told him she had been depressed for six months and feeling tearful and lonely, and that this stemmed from Singh not wanting to have any children with her. She declined an offer of counselling, saying it was a matter between her and her husband.

But Singh told the court his wife had not discussed her longing for children with him. He had “no problem” with the idea and claimed they had been trying for two years without success.

Quizzed by his barrister Mr Orlando Pownall, QC, about an anonymous letter sent to his children at their school, which described Sarbjit as “an evil stepmother” who was having an affair with a person named in the note, he said: “I went to the police station, came back, talked to Sarbjit and told her everything and she said she didn’t know anything.”

He said he suspected the letter had been written by his first wife’s family who had been against him marrying again. The note had charged Sarbjit with “brainwashing” the children against their “real family” and had described Singh as a “love-blind fool”.

The businessman denied letting an accomplice into the house at around 8.15am on the day she died.

He said he was watching the Punjabi news on TV in the living room at that time.

Singh pleads not guilty to murdering Sarbjit Kaur and also soliciting the murder of Amandeep Kaur.

The trial continues.