Rajvinder Kaur jailed for murdering mother-in-law with rolling pin

A woman who bludgeoned her mother-in-law to death in a frenzied rage using a rolling pin has been told she will spend at least 11 years behind bars.

Rajvinder Kaur, 37, received a life sentence after she was found guilty yesterday of murdering 56-year-old grandmother Baljit Kaur Buttar in the brutal attack after six months of tension between the pair.

She had denied murder, but admitted manslaughter, claiming she had been provoked because Mrs Buttar, who had come over from India on holiday for six months, had been unkind and called her names constantly.

She had also claimed her relative 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.

Mr Justice Burnett told a weeping Kaur that 11 years would be the minimum she would serve until eligible for parole.

"You completely lost your self-control and the attack that followed was a frenzied one," he said.

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 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 Mrs Buttar, forcing the case to be halted and a retrial ordered.

Bill Mousley QC, prosecuting, told Winchester Crown Court during the nine-day trial that a paramedic, John Pike, was called to Kaur's home after receiving a report that a woman had suffered a heart attack.

But when Mr Pike arrived, he found Mrs Buttar, known as BB, naked and dead in the bath having suffered serious head injuries.

The jury was shown a video taken of the scene which showed the bathroom floor covered in blood with further blood found in the kitchen where the rolling pin was discovered.

Mr Mousley said that when Mr Pike arrived on February 25 last year, there was shouting between Kaur and her husband, Iqbal Singh.

He then found Kaur washing her mother-in-law's body with a handheld shower in the bath.

Kaur had initially claimed Ms Buttar had a bath and was putting some oil on, and she had heard a bang and gone into the bathroom.

Ms Buttar had been staying with the family in the Broadlands Road flat since August 2010.

She had been due to return to India on February 27 - two days after she had died.

PA