A man who stabbed his wife to death with a kitchen knife and an axe was suffering from an “abnormality of mental functioning” resulting from a depressive disorder, a court has heard.

Sanjay Nijhawan, 46, is on trial at Guildford Crown Court accused of murdering his wife Sonita, 38, on May 21.

Mrs Nijhawan’s battered body was found by her father and sister-in-law in the kitchen of the couple’s newly-built home. They had moved in just days before she was killed in Crossfield Place, Weybridge.

She suffered more than 150 injuries to her head, neck, hands and thighs in the frenzied attack.

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Sonita Nijhawan

Mr Nijhawan was stabbing himself in the leg when he was found lying next to his wife’s body.

Mr Nijhawan, who denies murder, had visited two doctors on separate occasions at the Glenlyn Medical Centre in East Molesey in the months leading up to his wife’s killing, and expressed suicidal thoughts and depression.

He had also visited another doctor after quitting his job as a highly-paid banker at Barclays in Canary Wharf weeks before his wife’s death and was struggling with stress and worries about debt.

Orlando Pownell, defending, said Mr Nijhawan’s depressive mental state substantially impaired his rational judgement and the ability to exercise self-control when his wife was killed.

Dr Philip Joseph, a consultant forensic scientist, met with Mr Nijhawan at the Shaftesbury Clinic at Springfield Hospital, in Wandsworth, on July 15 following his arrest.

Giving evidence today, Dr Joseph said there had been “concerns about his deteriorating mental state” while in custody, as he thought he was “going to be taken to Nigeria and tortured”.

He said there was also a concern for Mr Nijhawan’s safety as he had self-harmed following the killing.

The court had heard that hours after the couple argued on the evening of May 20, numerous Google entries on Mr Nijhawan’s phone showed searches for “Tesco chloroform”, “softest point of the human skull” and “softest point of the human female skull”.

Dr Joseph met with Mr Nijhawan before giving evidence, and said the defendant claimed he had “wanted to plead guilty to murder”, as it was “premeditated and therefore it’s murder”.

Dr Joseph said: “It’s his view but it’s not correct. If he wanted to kill his wife and thought about doing it beforehand, it doesn’t rule out the possibility that he was mentally ill at the time.”

Mr Nijhawan told Dr Joseph he had put his wife’s wedding rings, that she had discarded onto the floor during the argument, back on her fingers once she was dead.

Dr Joseph added: “If he is a non-violent man then it makes the depressive illness loom in a much larger way.

“It provides an explanation. It would be very difficult to understand why he killed her if he didn’t have this. He went into a state of mind, he could see no way out.

“He overemphasised everything in his life. Everything just built up in his mind to the point where he could see no way out. Then he ended up doing something that did not solve anything at all.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that he was suffering from an abnormality of mental functioning resulting from a depressive illness.”

Mr Nijhawan, wearing glasses and a grey suit, sat with his head bowed in the dock during the hearing.

The trial continues.