A 37-year-old man who pleaded guilty to stabbing his wife 45 times before driving her into Durban’s harbour in a bid to cover-up the murder was sentenced to 18-years’ imprisonment in the Durban High Court on Friday.
Judge Vivienne Niles-Dunér ordered that Dhanendra Heeralall only be eligible for parole after 11 years.
Heeralall stabbed his wife Pritheshnee at least 45 times and then drove into the harbour near Durban’s sugar terminals on the night of June 28 2007.
When he was rescued by a nearby ship’s crew, he claimed he had been hijacked by two men brandishing knives.
Niles-Dunér said: ”This is indeed a tragic case. Two young children have been left without a mother and now without a father. Your family has been irreparably damaged.”
She accepted however that there was evidence of ”genuine remorse and that you feel for your actions”.
Affair
On Thursday the court heard that Pritheshnee Heeralall was having an affair and that about two weeks before the fateful night he discovered a photograph of her embracing another man.
The court heard evidence that on the night she was murdered, she received a phone call and was overheard by her husband as saying: ”Anand please stop ringing me. I’m with my husband.”
Anand, whose surname was not revealed in court, was the man with whom she was allegedly having an extramarital affair.
Niles-Dunér, handing down sentence on Friday, said she accepted that Heeralall had been provoked and that ”your moral blameworthiness was diminished”.
However, she said that break-ups and infidelity in marriages need not automatically mean that a lesser sentence than the prescribed minimum should be handed down. Niles-Dunér said each case should be judged on its merits.
Heeralall, a first time offender, should have received a prescribed minimum of 15-years.
The judge also expressed concern that crimes against women by men were on the rise.
”They seem, I regret to note, to be increasing. I say men because it is indeed rare for a wife to be accused [of a violent crime against her husband].”
She said that it appeared that even when women found their husbands committing infidelity they did not react violently because ”they do not regard them [their husbands] as their property or chattel”.
She pointed out that Heeralall’s discovery of his wife’s alleged infidelity did not generate an immediate response as he was aware of the alleged affair before the fateful night.
Instead, ”Your anger escalated and increased in intensity after her admission [of infidelity]. This is not a situation where you were taken by surprise.”
She said the nature of the offence was violent and abhorrent.
‘I need you so much’
Reacting to the sentence, Veena Ramnath, the mother of Pritheshnee, said: ”He should have got 20 plus [years] for what he did.”
Crying outside the courtroom, she rejected Heeralall’s claim that her daughter had been having an affair.
”It’s lies. And the photograph. It’s lies. If it was true he should have brought it [to court] as proof. He did not appreciate what she did for him.”
She said that she and her husband would be looking after Heeralall’s two children, a boy and a girl, aged eight and nine years, respectively.
”They must bring back the death penalty. We want the death penalty back.”
Ramnath said the children had seen their father once since he had been arrested.
”The little girl sometimes thinks she [Pritheshnee] is still alive.”
A letter written by the little girl to her dead mother this June, read: ”Please come back to us. We miss you so much. Please come back to us. …. and I need you so much.” – Sapa