The four-year-old son of a woman knifed to death at the family’s £5million mansion repeatedly asked: “Where’s mummy.”
A neighbour saw him on the drive moments after Sonita Nijhawan was taken to hospital in an ambulance. It is thought he may have witnessed Sonita, 38, suffer head and neck injuries shortly before his father Sanjay, 46, tried to kill himself by slashing at his throat.
The neighbour, who did not want to be named, said: “It was heartbreaking. I came back from an errand and saw Sonita’s father on the drive. He was in tears and their little boy was with him.
“I saw the ambulance and went over to ask what happened. I thought Sonita had fallen over or something but her father said she’d been killed. Their little boy was asking repeatedly, ‘Where’s mummy? Where’s mummy?’ I just put my arm around him and said, ‘Mummy will be back soon.’ What else could I say?”
Sonita had been stabbed and strangled. A 46-year-old man, believed to be her investment banker husband, was later arrested and is in hospital receiving treatment for knife wounds to his throat. Detectives are to question him when he recovers.
A close family friend of Sanjay said he was a "quiet man of very few words" with no history of violence.
Dr Ajit Prasad, 57, has known Sanjay's father, Baldev, for more than a decade and said the family are in complete shock and said: "Nobody knew there was a problem at all. I met with Sonita a couple of weeks ago, because I run care homes and they run care homes. We discussed staffing issues and things like that - there was no sign at all that anything was wrong. She seemed absolutely fine."
Ajit said that the couple's four-year-old son, who is believed to have witnessed the incident on Saturday morning, was being "looked after by both sets of parents". He added: "It's a shock to everyone. Sanjay was quite a quiet person. A few years ago when he lost his job, I thought he would go into a depression, I have no idea why. But he was fine. He's a man of very few words. Nothing had been brewing. He had no history of violence or anything like that."
Their house is on a private road in Weybridge, Surrey. Investment banker Sanjay and Sonita had bought the land for £925,000 in 2009, knocked down the old house and built the home of their dreams.
