Kohli's wife doesn't want him hanged

Kolkata, July 30, 2004
IANS, India

The wife of Maninder Pal Singh Kohli - the man who has confessed to the rape and murder of a schoolgirl in Britain - doesn't want him to be sentenced to death though she says he should be punished.

Bharati Das, whom Kohli married a fortnight before he was caught by police in West Bengal on July 15, was quoted as saying she didn't feel any pity for her husband who had kept his crime from her.

Kohli had told Das that he was a doctor and a British national. He gave his name as Mike Dennis. The two fell in love while working as volunteers in Red Cross programmes.

"He should be punished for his crime. But he appears contrite and should not be given the death sentence," Das was quoted as saying in local reports.

She said she had believed her husband when he told her earlier this week that he was not guilty and that he would ask his family to take her away to his home in Punjab.

His confession to the media has shattered her.

"Now I've to learn to live with the fact that I lived with a criminal," Das said.

"Why did god have to make me live with a criminal?"