Indian jailed for life over child's murder

India-born Baljinder Singh Mehat who beat his infant daughter to death under the influence of alcohol has been jailed for life.

Baljinder Singh Mehat, 44, from West Bromwich, who killed his child on Christmas eve pleaded guilty to inflicting more than 30 separate injuries on the toddler during an assault last year at the family home. Mehat, unemployed, was in sole charge of his two children while their mother worked at a laundry. After the assault he told his wife that he had beaten their child to death because she annoyed him.

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The defendant's son, then four-and-a-half years, told police his father had punched and stood on his sister's face and stomach after repeatedly asking her if she needed to use the potty. He was drunk on whiskey. The children's mother Rashpal discovered the tragedy when she returned home from work and found her husband sitting in the lounge watching television with their son and the bloodied Dilpreet on his lap.

Rashpal asked her husband why he had killed their child while waiting for a taxi to take her daughter to hospital. The lawyer Christopher Hotten QC, prosecuting, told the hearing at Wolverhampton Crown Court: "He said to her, 'She doesn't listen to me. She annoys me'."

Dilpreet was pronounced dead at Sandwell General Hospital on the evening of December 24, less than an hour after the assault.

Sentencing the defendant, Judge Michael Motts described the violence as "exceptional". He told Mehat: "There is only one sentence I can pass on you for this terrible offence and that is you get imprisonment for life. And that is the sentence of the court."

Anthony Barker QC, defending, said his client, who was born in India and married Rashpal - his second wife - in an arranged marriage, suffered from a sense of isolation. He said he worked as a labourer since coming to Britain at the age of 21 but he had suffered a motorcycle accident some years ago and had not been employed since.