Australia: Indian jailed for public attack on wife

Sydney: An Indian man in Australia was sentenced to eight months in jail for a violent attack on her estranged wife in her workplace, a media report said Sunday.

The unnamed man jumped the counter of a pizza shop where his estranged wife worked and tried to throttle her last month in Melbourne in the state capital of Victoria in Australia, despite an intervention order issued against him in March, The Herald Sun reported Sunday.

"I will kill you. If you are safe today, next time I will kill you definitely," the man said, while he punched his wife in the face and stabbed her in the shoulder with a sauce spreader.

"My concern is for the welfare of the victim," Magistrate Doug Bolster in Ringwood city near Melbourne, while announcing the sentence, said.

The Ringwood Magistrates’ Court heard last week that the Indian national was irate because he believed his wife had used him to secure the Australian residency.

The court also heard the man was high on synthetic cannabis at the time of the attack and claimed not to remember it, the report stated.

The couple married in 2011 and had separated this year.

The woman had been granted an intervention order against her estranged husband in March.

The man also claimed that his wife had started seeing another man shortly after their wedding.

The man contended that he suffered from a psychiatric illness and promised the court he would return to India to seek psychiatric treatment, once he was released on a suspended sentence.

However, the court said that there was no evidence about the man being mentally ill.