Immigrant Gets 6-Year Term for Killing Wife

A 26-year-old immigrant from India, convicted of strangling his wife, was sentenced Wednesday to six years in state prison by a Van Nuys Superior Court judge who said the defendant deserved a stiffer sentence.

Nandan Lal admitted in court last month that he choked his wife, Mandeep Kaur, 25, Aug. 18 in their Woodland Hills condominium. Lal said he was reacting to her having insulted him and his mother but insisted he did not mean to kill her.

Lal also testified that the couple’s marital strife stemmed from his wife’s domineering and independent behavior, which he said was unlike women in India.

With credit for time served awaiting trial and for good behavior in prison, Lal could be freed in two years and a month, court officials said.

Lal was convicted Feb. 28 of voluntary manslaughter, which carries potential sentences of 3, 6 or 11 years, depending on circumstances.

Judge Alan B. Haber said he would have given Lal the maximum sentence “if there was any way I could legally impose the high term.”

Deputy Public Defender Barry A. Taylor argued that, because Lal had no criminal record and had confessed “at a relatively early date,” he was entitled to a sentence of either three or six years.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Deborah L. Kranze acknowledged she could find no circumstances that justified a maximum sentence.

But Kranze insisted, as she had at Lal’s trial, that the killing constituted second-degree murder, which carries a sentence of 15 years to life in prison.

Two relatives of the victim who attended the sentencing were angered at the prison term imposed.

Lal testified that his wife would not allow him to get a job and prevented him from contacting his family in India.

The defendant acknowledged in court that, for six days after his wife’s death, he told friends, family and police that she had failed to return from a business trip.

Kranze said that, after repeated questioning by police, Lal led investigators to a desert location where Kaur’s partly decomposed body was found.

The prosecutor contended that Lal killed his wife because she wanted to divorce him and cut him off financially from her prosperous clothing business.