Man ‘quite deliberately’ strangled ex-wife and hid body in suitcase, court told
Ashwin Daudia is on trial at Leicester Crown Court, accused of murdering his former wife, Kiran Daudia.
An “always happy” mother-of-two was strangled by her ex-husband with her own scarf and “trussed up in a suitcase”, a court has heard.
Kiran Daudia, 46, was discovered on January 17 last year close to some rubbish bins, a day after the incident allegedly took place.
The jury at Leicester Crown Court heard that her former husband, Ashwin Daudia, who still shared the same house, assaulted her and “quite deliberately” killed her between 2.20pm and 3.30pm.
Daudia, now 51, of Lyme Road, Leicester, denies murdering her and previously told police “I haven’t killed her”.
The court heard that, despite the troubled relationship, they lived separate lives under the same roof, with their two sons choosing to “side” with their mother and having relatively little to do with their father.
Opening the case against Daudia, who followed proceedings through a Gujarati interpreter, prosecutor William Harbage QC said: “(Kiran Daudia’s) body was discovered trussed up in a suitcase on the day after she disappeared.
“The person who murdered her and then disposed of her body was her former husband, this defendant, Ashwin Daudia.
“There was an argument between the defendant and Kiran Daudia. There was a struggle in which he assaulted her. The defendant then, quite deliberately, killed his former wife by strangling her with some sort of ligature, probably her own scarf.”
Mr Harbage said Daudia then “crammed Kiran’s dead body” into a suitcase and wheeled it out into the yard where his son would not see it.
He continued: “Had this been some sort of domestic incident which had got out of hand and the defendant immediately regretted what had happened, one might have expected the defendant to have raised the alarm and called for an ambulance or the police.
“He did nothing of the sort – instead, showing remarkable coolness in the circumstances, he tried to cover up what he had done.”
Mr Harbage told the jury that Mrs Daudia had wanted her ex-husband out of the house for some time and was due to sell it to her sister on the day she was killed, which would have allowed her to stay as a resident and Daudia to move on.
He added: “After the divorce, Kiran joined a dating agency and had started to meet other men. That may also have been a source of tension or resentment for the defendant.”
