Ex-Dubai girl gets 20 years in US for setting hubby on fire in bathtub

Dubai: An Indian woman from Dubai has been sentenced to 20 years in prison by a US court after being convicted of arson leading to her husband’s death.

Shriya Patel, 27, earlier faced the death sentence for allegedly dousing her husband Bimal Patel, 29, with gasoline and setting him on fire after luring him to a hot oil massage in the bathtub of their apartment in Austin, Texas, in April 2012.

Western media reported that although Shriya’s family was not present in the courtroom on March 10, her 23-year-old brother, based in Dubai, was Skyped in on a television screen.

They said the brother contested the state’s depiction of Shriya as an upper-class young woman, saying she hadn’t studied in London and had been raised in a middle-class family in Dubai.

Her father worked in a factory and her mother was a housewife,” one report said.

When XPRESS contacted the brother in Dubai on March 13, he declined to comment.

Reports quoted an investigator telling the US court that Shriya was not happy with her arranged marriage with Bimal and had been in the US for only a week before the incident.

They said she poured gasoline over Bimal as he lay in the bathtub and set him on fire with two candles in the bathroom. They said Shriya planned her husband’s murder by purchasing a gas tank, gasoline and candles. 

Coma before death

Reports quoted officials as saying Bimal, who suffered severe burns, was airlifted to a San Antonio hospital after police responded to emergency calls from neighbours.

He remained in hospital in a coma until he died from his wounds five months later.

Prosecutors were quoted as saying Shriya was upset because Bimal, a budding screenwriter, had been laid off and did not live up to her expectations.

Reports said Shriya, found guilty of the lesser first-degree felony of arson causing death, has already served two years of incarceration and is likely to be eligible for parole in three years.