Woman takes disabled husband on 'holiday' to India and leaves him there

Updated
 Woman takes disabled husband on Indian 'holiday of a lifetime' and leaves him there
Woman takes disabled husband on Indian 'holiday of a lifetime' and leaves him there

Stock photo: PA


A woman from Zurich has been jailed for four years in Switzerland after taking her disabled husband on a trip to India and leaving him there - to save on care costs.

According to a report in the Daily Mail, the 65-year-old showed her husband videos of "palm-fringed beaches and luxury hotels" to convince him to go there.

The woman, a currency trader from Bassersdorf, then took the 74-year-old out of a £6,000 a month retirement home in Switzerland to a poverty-stricken suburb of New Delhi - and reportedly paid a family £1,500 a month to take him in.

She then returned to Switzerland and did not contact him again. The man died in November 2008, eight months after he'd arrived in January.

According to The Local, the cantonal high court found that the home in Punjab was not equipped to provide the medical care necessary for the man, who suffered with dementia and was severely disabled.

After the man died, she was accused of abduction by federal authorities and spent 170 days in detention.

In a first trial she was found guilty and given a two-year suspended sentence.

The cantonal high court this week increased the sentence imposed by a lower court, and she was jailed for four years for kidnapping.

The court also rejected the woman's argument that she had done what was best for her husband because of the "warm climate" in India.

According to the Daily Mail, a prosecutor told the court the act was the "utterly cynical disposal of an old and disabled person to save money", adding: "She had even shown her husband videos and books on India to sell the trip to him as a luxurious holiday.

"But instead he died alone in a strange land, without familiar faces around him and with no possibility of communication with his new carers."

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