Glasgow man jailed for five and a half years for killing his wife while she slept

A husband who bludgeoned his sleeping wife to death before handing himself into police was today jailed for five and a half years.

Asghar Buksh repeatedly hit mother-of-six Nasreen Buksh over the head with a heavy blunt object although the fatal weapon has never been found.

After the attack on his wife at the home they shared the 55-year-old went to Cathcart police station in Glasgow and told an officer: "I've come to hand myself in. I think my wife's dead. I hit her on the head. I did it."

Shopkeeper Buksh inflicted at least five blows on his wife's head with the unidentified implement in the deadly attack on September 24 last year.

Pathologists who examined the victim said that the lack of defensive injuries and the position of her body suggested that she was attacked as she slept.

He was originally charged with murdering Mrs Buksh (43) after the assault at a flat in Dixon Avenue, in Glasgow, on September 24 last year.

But the Crown earlier accepted his guilty plea to a reduced charge of culpable homicide on the basis of diminished responsibility.

A judge told Buksh at the High Court in Edinburgh: "This case has obvious tragic connotations for yourself, your family and obviously for your wife."

Lord Burns said: "I accept, as the Crown does, that you acted when your responsibility for your actions was diminished by reason of reactive stress disorder."

The judge said: "I also take account of the fact you have no history of abusive behaviour to your wife prior to September 24 last year."

But Lord Burns said the court could not overlook the nature of the assault carried out at a time when he must have known the victim was defenceless.

"You have led, I think, a blameless life up until now and you have provided for your substantial family for many years and have contributed to society," he told Buksh.

Lord Burns told the first offender that he had reduced the sentence from one of eight years to reflect his early guilty plea.

The court heard that Buksh had no memory of the killing and his defence counsel Sarak Livingstone said his amnesia was "absolutely genuine".

The court heard that the couple had been married for 25 years but over the last 10 or 11 years their relationship appeared to have broken down and they became increasingly estranged although they continued to share a roof.

Prosecutor Gordon Lamont said: "They slept separately and Mrs Buksh routinely slept on the sofa in the living room. Their children report that they barely spoke to each other."

He said problems in their marriage appeared to have intensified after the wife went to Pakistan on holiday in May last year. She had become involved with another man.

Two days before the killing Buksh went to a police station in Paisley, where he had a shop, and spoke with a support officer saying he feared his wife was going to take their youngest child, aged 10, to Pakistan and not return.

He also made an emergency appointment with a doctor and complained he was suffering from stress and not sleeping. He was prescribed medication to combat the stress.

The court heard that Buksh was suffering an acute stress reaction and that psychiatrists who examined him agreed he was suffering an abnormality of mind at the time of the killing.

Miss Livingstone said: "He is crushed by what he has done and what has happened. He continues to grieve for his wife and for the shame and tragedy he has brought on his children."

She said: "There is nothing I can say at all which in anyway can mitigate what happened. What happened was a tragedy of enormous proportions."

"Although he has done an awful thing, beyond awful, he is not a bad man," said the defence counsel.