A man has been jailed for life for strangling his wife and their two young children, aged six and four.

Saju Chelavalel, 52, was jailed at Northampton Crown Court with a minimum term of 40 years for killing his partner Anju Asok and their two children, Jeeva and Janvi.

All three died after being found with serious injuries at a flat in Petherton Court, Kettering, Northamptonshire, on 15 December last year.

Chelavalel was then tasered while wielding a knife after strangling NHS nurse Anju and his children.

Passing sentence on Chelavalel, who stared straight ahead in the dock at Northampton Crown Court, High Court judge Mr Justice Pepperall said Chelavalel’s actions had been brutal and “extraordinarily selfish”.

The judge said the children would have been “terrified and deeply traumatised” after hearing their mother’s murder.

Both could have been brought up by other relatives, the judge told Chelavalel, who he said had killed his wife “in an alcohol-fuelled fit of rage”.

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“Fuelled by alcohol, wallowing in self pity, engulfed in your resentment at your wife’s perceived infidelity, you instead chose to snuff out their young and precious lives.”

Chelavalel, originally from Kerala in India, sobbed in the dock with his head bowed on Monday as an audio recording was played to the court on which his wife could be heard coughing and his children were talking.

The court was told the recording captured the sound of a blender being used to make a “toxic” mixture of chocolate and pills intended to send the children to sleep.

The court also heard that Chelavalel had more than four hours “to reflect on whether to kill his children” before using a dressing gown cord to kill Jeeva and Janvi.

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