A MAN WHO claimed that he accidentally cut the throat of his wife with a carving knife he bought two days earlier in a Cork supermarket has been found guilty of murder.

The jury at the Central Criminal Court in Cork found Regin Parithapara Rajan (43) guilty of the murder of his 38 year old wife Deepa Paruthiyezhuth Dinamani. They had deliberated for just five over hours.

Ms Justice Siobhan Lankford thanked the jurors for their service and remanded Rajan in custody for sentencing on 2 May. The only sibling of the deceased, Ullas Dinamani, will attend the sentence virtually from India.

Rajan opted to give direct evidence in the murder trial, previously telling the jury that he wished he could turn back the clock to 14 July 2023 when his wife Deepa was last alive.

Rajan, who is from Kerala in India, said that that the Deepa sustained a 14cm knife wound following a tragic accident at their home in Cardinal Court in Wilton in Cork city.

The cut ran from an earlobe to the midpoint of her neck. He said there was a struggle between the pair and claimed his wife had picked up the knife in a bedroom in their home and told him to get out following an argument.

He said that “her throat got cut” amid a tussle.

“I took the knife. We had a struggle. The knife was in my hand. And falling down, her throat got cut. There was blood everywhere. Such a shock for me. I didn’t know what to do.”

Rajan indicated that he never intended to stab his wife: “I never had an intention to harm her in any way, not even to give her a slap.”

Severe injuries

Chief State Pathologist Dr Linda Mulligan gave evidence that Deepa not only lost massive amounts of blood but also inhaled and swallowed her own blood.

Her windpipe was exposed by the wound and she was rendered unable to speak, Dr Mulligan said, adding that the wound was sustained in a “single swipe” action. 

Deepa was found dead in a bed at her home after members of the Armed Support Unit attended at the scene. Rajan had called 999 and told the operator that he had killed his wife and that gardaí should come and arrest him.

The trial had heard that Deepa was “cold and stiff to to the touch” on a bed in her bedroom when gardaí and the ambulance service crews arrived onsite on the evening of 14 July 2023.

A handwritten note was found on a table in the bedroom where Deepa had been located partially naked under a duvet cover. The writer asked for forgiveness for what he had done to Deepa. A wedding ring was found near the note.

When shown the note under cross examination at the trial Rajan neither denied or confirmed writing it. Instead he remarked that he “never had bad handwriting liked that”.

Knife purchase and Google searches

During the trial, jurors viewed CCTV of Rajan buying the murder weapon two days before he killed his wife. He maintained under cross examination that the knife had been bought  to cut rockfish.

Rajan said Deepa had told him which knife to purchase for the purpose of preparing the fish.

The couple had moved to Ireland just four months earlier with their five-year-old son so that Deepa could take up employment as a senior manager in a finance company in Cork city.

The prosecution evidence in the case found that Rajan had searched on Google for prison conditions in Ireland in the period before the murder.

Under cross examination, he claimed that he had been watching a Netflix documentary about prisons and he was curious about conditions in Ireland. Evidence was also presented to the jury that Rajan had completed web searches about carving knives.

Rajan admitted under cross examination that he failed to call an ambulance for his dying wife. He claimed to have tried to stop the bleeding with his hand as he was “blank” and “in shock”.

Couple had been separated

Sean Gillane, Prosecution Senior Counsel, said that after the murder, Rajan used his wife’s phone to text man called Jay, with whom Deepa had been in contact. He then pretended to be Deepa.

Gillane asked Rajan why he had wrapped his partially naked wife in a duvet after the stabbing. The accused replied: “Just to protect her dignity. I always loved her.”

The jurors also heard evidence that Rajan told a garda at the scene on 14 July 2023 that he stabbed his wife because she was cheating on him and he could not “tolerate” it.

Jurors were told that Deepa and Regin were effectively separated but living in separate rooms under the same roof.

Ullas Dinamani, the only sibling of the late Deepa Dinamani said that his sister had told her husband that she wanted a divorce but he wouldn’t accept it.  He said he paid for his brother-in-law to attend a therapist after the couple moved to Ireland in March 2023.

The jury of seven women and five men also heard evidence from Prasad “Jay” Jayarathinam, who travelled from the UK for the case. The witness said that he exchanged messages with Deepa for about a month before her murder having gotten to know her online on Match.com

Jay and Deepa never met in person. Jayarathinam said that Deepa said her decision to marry Regin was “the biggest mistake she did in her life”.

A friend of Rajan, Mahesh Murali, also told the trial that Regin Rajan had asked him to pick up his son from summer camp on the day of the murder. He had claimed he had a job interview. 

Murali went to to the home in Wilton that evening after Rajan failed to collect the little boy, as had been arranged when Rajan asked to speak to Murali in private.

He told him that he had killed his wife and Murali called the emergency services. He also told Rajan to do so.