A man who claimed he accidentally cut the throat of his wife with a carving knife he bought two days earlier in a Cork supermarket has been found guilty of murder.
Regin Rajan (43) didn’t show any emotion as the jury at the Central Criminal Court in Cork found him guilty of the murder of his 38-year-old wife Deepa Paruthiyezhuth Dinamani. They had deliberated for just over five hours.
Ms Justice Siobhán Lankford remanded Rajan in custody for sentencing on May 2nd.
The only sibling of the deceased Ullas Dinamani will attend the sentence virtually from India.
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Rajan opted to give direct evidence in the murder trial. He shed a tear as he told the jury he wished he could turn back the clock to July 14th, 2023 when his wife Deepa was last alive.
Rajan, who is from Kerala in India, had claimed Deepa sustained a 14cm knife wound following a tragic accident at their home in Cardinal Court in Wilton in Cork city. The cut ran from an ear lobe to the mid point of her neck.
Rajan had insisted that there was a struggle between the pair. He claimed his wife had picked up the knife at a bedroom in their home and told him to get out following an argument.
He said “her throat got cut” during a tussle.
“I took the knife. We had a struggle. The knife was in my hand. And falling down, her throat got cut. There was blood everywhere. Such a shock for me. I didn’t know what to do.”
Rajan said he never intended to stab his wife.
“I never had an intention to harm her in any way, not even to give her a slap.”
Chief State Pathologist Dr Linda Mulligan gave evidence that Deepa not only lost massive amounts of blood but also inhaled and swallowed her own blood. Her windpipe was exposed by the gaping wound and she was rendered unable to speak. Dr Mulligan said the wound was sustained in a “single swipe” action.
Deepa was found dead after members of the Armed Support Unit (ASU) attended the scene. Rajan had called 999 and told the operator he had killed his wife and that police should come and arrest him.
A handwritten note was found on a table in the bedroom where Deepa had been located partially naked under a duvet cover. The writer asked for forgiveness for what he had done to Deepa. A wedding ring was found near the note.
When shown the note under cross examination at the trial Rajan neither denied nor confirmed writing it. Instead he remarked that he “never had bad handwriting like that”.
Deepa’s son (5) had gone to summer camp in Cork that morning.
During, the course of the trial jurors viewed CCTV of Rajan buying the murder weapon two days before he killed his wife. He brought a bag for life to Tesco and used his club card as he made the lunchtime purchase on July 12th, 2023 of the carving knife, a bottle of Jameson and a soft drink.
He maintained under cross examination that the knife had been bought to cut rockfish.
The couple had moved to Ireland just four months earlier with their young son so that Deepa could take up employment as a senior manager in a finance company in Cork.
The prosecution evidence was that Rajan had googled prison conditions in Ireland before the murder.
Under cross examination he claimed he had been watching a Netflix documentary about prison and was curious about prison conditions in this country. Evidence was also presented that Rajan had completed web searches about carving knives.
Rajan admitted under cross examination he failed to call an ambulance for his dying wife. He claimed to have tried to stop the bleeding with his hand as he was “blank” and “in shock.”
Sean Gillane, prosecution senior counsel, said in the aftermath of the murder Rajan picked up his wife’s phone and texted a man called Jay with whom Deepa had been in contact. He then pretended to be Deepa.
Mr Gillane asked Rajan why he had wrapped his partially naked wife in a duvet after the stabbing. The accused replied: “Just to protect her dignity. I always loved her.”
The jurors heard evidence Rajan told a garda at the scene on July 14th, 2023 that he stabbed his wife because she was cheating on him and he could not “tolerate” it.
Jurors were told that Deepa and Regin were effectively separated but living in separate rooms under the same roof.
Ullas Dinamani, the only sibling of the late Deepa Dinamani, said his sister had told her husband she wanted a divorce but he wouldn’t accept it.
He said he paid for his brother in law to attend a therapist after the couple moved to Ireland in March 2023.
The jury of seven women and five men also heard evidence from Prasad “Jay” Jayarathinam who travelled from the UK for the case.
The witness said he exchanged messages with Deepa for about a month before her murder having got to know her online on Match.com.
Jay and Deepa never met in person. Mr Jayarathinam said Deepa told him her decision to marry Regin was “the biggest mistake she did in her life”.
A friend of Rajan, Mahesh Murali, also told the trial that Regin Rajan had asked him to pick up his son from summer camp on the day of the murder. He had claimed he had a job interview.
