A Milton Keynes husband who stabbed his wife to death and then wrapped up her body before dragging it into their garage, told a jury on Tuesday, November 2, 2021 said: “I went into a bit of a frenzy – I remember attacking her.”
The husband 47-year-old Anil Gill was asked by his barrister, Frida Hussain QC: “In that moment were you intending to kill her or cause her serious harm?”
Mr Gill replied: “No, not at all”
The barrister then asked him: “When you attacked her did you have any self control?”
He replied: “No I didn’t.”
The husband is on trial at Luton Crown Court accused of murdering his wife Ranjit Gill, 43, at their home in January of this year.
The husband has admitted the lesser charge of manslaughter and claims he lost self control on the night he stabbed his wife inflicting 18 separate wounds.
The jury has been told it was four deep and significant injuries to her chest that caused her death.
The attack is said to have taken place in the the living room of their home in Beresford Close, Emerson Valley, Milton Keynes in the early hours of January 31 this year.
Giving evidence the husband claimed his relationship with his wife had been like a “roller coaster” in the weeks leading up to the killing.
He claimed to the jury there were frequent arguments about her drug taking, her relationship with another man and her lifestyle of going out all night.
Mr Gill said he felt at “rock bottom” and was losing weight because he wasn’t eating.
But he said just a just a few weeks before the night of the killing they had agreed to renew their marriage vows and buy new rings for each other.
He told the court on the day of his wife’s death he had given into her and allowed her to buy cocaine for “one last time” saying he was “fed up with the constant arguing all the time.”
The husband told the jury that although she had previously claimed the affair with another man was over, he realised that evening she was still “pursuing him.”
He said their arguing continued through the evening and he went on: “She said I had to take cocaine to save our marriage.
The husband who claims he had never taken cocaine until then, said: “ I reluctantly agreed.”
That night he said his wife taunted him about the sex she’d had with her boyfriend and other people within his circle.
He said she continued to give him “details” about what she’d got up to during these sexual encounters which made him upset and angry and he said he felt “betrayed.”
Mr Gill then told the jury: “She was saying I couldn’t satisfy her sexual needs – it made me feel worthless.”
He said said as the argument continued in the kitchen, he went into the living room and had only just sat down when she came “rushing” into the room with a large kitchen knife.
“She threatened me with it pointing it towards my face” he said, adding that he was frightened she was going to stab him.
The husband then told the court how his wife then sat down on a sofa telling him he would have to “watch his back.”
He said she continued to taunt him telling him he was not man enough to make her feel good and by now she had placed the knife down by a window about an “arm’s length” from where he was sitting.
Mr Gill said it was at that moment that lost control and “went into a bit of a frenzy” and attacked his wife having taken cocaine earlier for the first time “to save our marriage.”
The prosecution say the husband had been been “dominating” and a “bully” towards his wife Ranjit in the years leading up to the killing.
They say the husband is guilty of the murder of his wife and what happened in the early hours of January 31, 2021, had been a deliberate attack to kill her or cause grievous bodily harm.
Prosecutor Charles Ward-Jackson told the jury that over the years the defendant had regularly shouted at his wife, hit or slapped her and, on one occasion, had struck her around her head. Once he had kicked her ankle and there had been an incident when he hit her across her back with a plank.
The wife, said the prosecutor, had been threatened with a knife by him and he had pushed her down the stairs. On another occasion he was said to have threatened Ranjit with a Japanese sword and held a knife to her neck.
The court was told that in October 2018 police had attended the couple’s home to reports of a domestic incident, but when she wouldn’t tell officers what had happened no action was taken.
“From then on the prosecution say Ranjit was coping with the abuse from her husband by drinking too much,” said Mr Ward-Jackson.
He said the husband was smoking cannabis at this time.
In the summer of 2020 Mr Ward-Jackson said the wife began an affair with a man who he said was a drug user and “probably a dealer as well.”
The prosecutor said in a message she sent to the man last November, she said: “I can’t get out. I have been found out. I had to say I was having an affair with another woman to throw the scent off you.”
By then, the jury was told, the wife had called a domestic violence charity hotline.
The husband was also looking into starting possible divorce proceedings.
Mr Ward-Jackson said in the weeks leading up to the killing both were drinking to excess and taking cocaine bought from the man Ranjit had been seeing.
The prosecutor then told how the husband began secretly recording conversations with his wife on his mobile phone during which he would get her to talk about her affair, sex acts with the other man and drug taking.
“He was deliberately and covertly recording her in order to gather evidence, the prosecution say, probably connected to the divorce.
Mr Ward-Jackson said that by mid-January of this year the couple seemed to have “patched things up” and the wife told a friend they had renewed their wedding vows.
However, evidence obtained later by the police showed that the defendant during January was searching the internet on matters which showed his “increasing preoccupation with his own sexuality.”
Mr Ward-Jackson said a “gay element” was creeping into his internet searches and, in addition, there were also searches carried out by him in connection with his wife’s sex life.
“He was obsessively looking at sexual references to his wife,” he said.
On the evening of Saturday January 30 this year, the court has been the couple had £200 worth of cocaine delivered to their home.
Mr Ward-Jackson said shortly after 11pm that night the husband had taken a photo on his phone of his wife asleep in a chair in the kitchen.
“It’s likely drug taking and drinking had been going on in the lounge and she had gone to sleep in the kitchen,“ said the prosecutor.
He said while the wife was sleeping the evidence from his mobile phone and later a computer in an upstairs bedroom showed he had been looking at gay porn sites.
One search term used had been “Cocaine brings out the gay in me.”
The prosecutor said sometime around 1am in the early hours of the Sunday morning a woman neighbour had gone to bed when she had heard the sound of a woman screaming followed by a “thumping or pounding sound.”
He went on: “The prosecution say it’s very likely she heard the sound of Ranjit being stabbed to death.”
Mr Ward-Jackson said: “He had been looking at gay porn when for some reason events took a dramatic change and something happened that led him to kill her.
The court was told forensic evidence would show the wife was stabbed in the living room after he had gone into the kitchen to get two knives from a set.
The prosecutor said the evidence contradicted the husband’s assertion that what he’d done was in a “frenzy” and “a loss of control” at what she’d done.
After killing his wife the defendant, said Mr Ward-Jackson, spent the next few hours cleaning up and wrapping up his wife’s body in a duvet and black bin liners, which he then dragged to the garage.
He cleaned the carpet in the living room using bleach and the two knives were put in a bin bag, having been cleaned.
“Far from being in a state of remorse about what he had done, he was trying to tidy up,“ said the prosecutor.
He said the husband didn’t call the police until just after 10am that morning, telling the operator: “She forced me to take cocaine, I didn’t want to. She got addicted to drugs and had an affair.”
Mr Ward-Jackson said police arrived a short while later and found the body of the wife in the garage.
He said it was the prosecution’s case that before officers arrived, the defendant had laid out lines of cocaine on a tea tray.
“He was adding cocaine to the tray to make it look more of a drug fuelled night than it was,” said Mr Ward-Jackson and “bolster the drug aspect” of what happened in “an attempt to justify the killing.”
The jury heard that having been arrested and taken into custody, Mr Gill was seen by a psychiatric nurse and told him how he didn’t drink and never took drugs, which, said the prosecutor, was a lie.
He said the husband then told the nurses how he had agreed to take alcohol and cocaine the previous night and the combination had “turned him into a killer.”
The prosecutor said a sample of the husband’s hair was taken for analysis and revealed traces of cocaine in it, showing he had to have been taking the drug from late December of 2020 to late January of 2021 and not just the night before.
Case proceeding
