Lawyer threw mother-in-law on sofa and said: I’ll cut your throat
A FORMER Crown Prosecution Service lawyer flung her mother-in-law on a sofa shouting, “If you open your mouth I’ll cut your throat”, a court heard.
Solicitor Anne Murgai, 42, was living with her husband Rakesh Kariholoo, their two-year-old son and her motherin-law Usha at the time of the assault.
Mrs Kariholoo, 69, who had bought the £375,000 house in Sydenham with her son, told the court: “I was not allowed to touch or feed the child and there were arguments between her and Rakesh, with her telling him, ‘You don’t do this and you don’t do that.’
“I told her Rakesh is doing enough and she should help him. She was not working, she was sitting at home all day and did not like that I called her a housewife. Rakesh had two jobs at the time and she was telling him, ‘You don’t do the garden, you don’t do the toilets’.
“I told her Rakesh is doing everything and she should also help and that it was very honourable to be a housewife, but that created a reaction.
“She came to me and said, ‘I’ll show you’, and pushed me three times and fortunately I fell on the sofa. I could have fallen on the floor for all she cared. She hit me two or three times on the shoulder and said, ‘I’ll kill you’.”
The court heard Murgai said: “If you open your mouth I’ll cut your throat.”
Mrs Kariholoo said the next day she was hanging out laundry in the garden when Murgai assaulted her again. She told the court she heard Murgai tell Mr Kariholoo: “When you’re not here you’ll see what I’ll do to your mum.”
Mr Kariholoo, who witnessed both of the assaults in September last year, slept on a sofa downstairs and left his mother in a hotel while he was at work. He called the police eight days later. Mrs Kariholoo said: “I did not want to call the police, it was my son’s idea. He couldn’t take it any longer.”
Murgai was convicted of two counts of assault at Croydon magistrates’ court, where she has prosecuted hundreds of cases, and ordered to carry out 80 hours of community service. She told the court her husband and his mother physically tried to push her out of the house and twice took a phone out of her hand when she tried to call 999.
“It’s a load of nonsense, it’s all lies,” she said. “She was shouting, swearing and being abusive while she was putting the laundry out. It was a set-up by her.
“That home was a toxic environment and Usha wants to control her son and married life. She sees her life as with Rakesh, she’s married to him.” Murgai is now on benefits and lives with her mother and son. She has objected to Mr Kariholoo having contact with him.
District Judge Kamlesh Rana told her: “An assault on a lady of this age in her own home, where she is entitled to feel safe, must be reflected with some degree of seriousness.” Murgai was placed on 12 months’ probation and ordered to pay £200 costs and £100 compensation to Mrs Kariholoo.
She must comply with a 12-month restraining order, prohibiting contact with Mrs Kariholoo and banning her from going to the Sydenham home. She shook her head in court as the decision was announced. Outside, Mr Kariholoo said: “I also shook my head in disbelief at what she did to my mother. I wondered, ‘How has it come to this?’”