Telford man Gurmeet Singh Ubhi was a popular face in the Sikh community but at home he was a violent, angry man who strangled his daughter.

Killer Gurmeet Singh Ubhi

The 54-year-old Sainsbury’s worker had threatened to kill his daughter Amrit Kaur Ubhi or wife Satinder Kaur Ubhi or both if they pushed him too far.

That time came on September 7 last year when the domineering father of two erupted and viciously attacked his 24-year-old petite, intelligent daughter.

He beat her around the head until he eventually strangled her and left her body on the dining room floor of the family home in Berberis Road, Leegomery.

The trainee teacher, who told colleagues at Monsoon in Telford Shopping Centre of her dreams of marrying her white soldier boyfriend Stuart Loakes, fought for her life as she battled against her father’s attack.

She bit his arm and scratched him in a desperate bid to fend of his violent blows.

Ubhi then calmly cleaned up the dining room around his daughter’s body and made several phone calls before he got changed and drove to Wellington Police Station to tell officers to go to the family home.

But it was not the first time Ubhi’s violent streak had spiralled out of control.

In 2004 Ubhi was jailed for four years after he admitted repeatedly stabbing his second wife Parmajit Kaur, who he married in 2001, with a foot-long chisel during a row.

He smashed a Thermos flask over the 27-year-old’s head after she accused him of having an affair, before launching a vicious attack with a chisel which left her fighting for her life in a pool of blood.

The devout Sikh beat her with the chisel until she had fractures to her head which left her skull exposed. She was lucky to survive.

He told police “the devil and his anger” had taken over him when his second wife pulled his beard – something which was an insult to his religion.

He served just half of his prison sentence and returned to the community in 2006 where he helped to raise hundreds of pounds for charity with friends at the Sikh Temple in Hadley and worked night-shifts at Sainsbury’s on Telford’s Forge Retail Park.

His former wife, Satinder Kaur Ubhi, gave the father of her two children a second chance. She thought it was the start of a “fresh life” but within weeks, Ubhi started to control everything and everyone in the house, including his two children.

He did not approve of his daughter’s love for Mr Loakes, who serves with the 2nd Battalion The Rifles, and was angry his attempts to set her up with a Sikh man had failed. An arrangement had been made for Ubhi to move out but before he did his anger flared up and he murdered his daughter.

One member of the Sikh community, who did not want to be named, said: “He was a very angry man. We knew he had been in prison before when he did that to his ex-wife. But we didn’t think he would do something like this.”

Temple members said Ubhi worshipped most weekends and was a quiet man on the face of it but they knew he could get angry.

Another worshipper said: “We knew he had family problems – he seemed to have a problem with his daughter Amrit.”