Indian-origin Canadian gets life term for killing wife

A Canadian court has sentence an Indian-origin man to life in prison for murdering his pregnant wife in 2006.

Mukhtiar Panghali, who was charged a few months after his school teacher wife Manjit Panghali's charred corpse was found near a waterway at Delta, British Columbia in 2006, was sentenced to life in prison with no parole for 15 years, Thestar.com reported.

In her judgment, British Columbia Supreme Court Judge Heather Holmes said the "egregious circumstances" of the killing motivated her to go beyond the minimum 10 years for parole eligibility, to 15 years.

The judge also sentenced Panghali to three-and-a-half years for interfering with his wife's remains, to be served concurrently with his life sentence, the report said.

Last month, the court had convicted Mukhtiar Panghali of second-degree murder and interfering with bodily remains. Manjit, 31, was strangled and likely died before her body was burned.

The couple also had a daughter who was in pre-school when her mother died.