London crossbow killer Ramanodge Unmathallegadoo found guilty of murdering pregnant ex-wife

Victim: Sana Muhammad
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A hospital worker who shot dead his heavily pregnant ex-wife with a crossbow was facing life in prison today.

Ramanodge Unmathallegadoo, 51, spent three years planning the attack on Sana Muhammad after she left him for another man, and waited until she was only a month away from giving birth before striking.

The former site manager at Newham General Hospital armed himself with two crossbows, a knife and a hammer and hid in the garden shed at Mrs Muhammad’s home in Ilford, east London, where she lived with her new husband, Imtiaz Muhammad.

He burst out and chased Mr Muhammad into the kitchen before firing into his ex-wife’s stomach as she tried to flee upstairs.

Mrs Muhammad, 34, died after the 18-inch hunting bolt pierced her heart in the attack on November 12 last year.

It “miraculously” missed her unborn child who survived following an emergency caesarean section, the Old Bailey heard.

Unmathallegadoo denied murder, claiming the crossbow had gone off by accident, but a jury today unanimously found him guilty. He will be sentenced next Friday.

He showed no emotion as Judge Mark Lucraft told him: “You have been convicted of a most horrendous crime.”

Victim: Sana Muhammad

Unmathallegadoo married Mrs Muhammad when she was just 16 and he was 35.

It was an arranged marriage that became volatile and it ended in 2012.

The court heard the disintegration of the marriage had a “profound effect” on Unmathallegadoo, leading to a “deeply held desire for a most violent revenge”.

Police at a property in Applegarth Drive, Ilford, where heavily pregnant Devi Unmathallegadoo, 35, was fatally shot with a crossbow
Emma Bowden/PA

During the attack, his teenage son wrestled the crossbow from his grasp.

The court heard Unmathallegadoo then said to him: “You will understand when you are older.”

Prosecutor Richard Horwell QC said: “It was a cold-blooded execution by a man ... who had been consumed by hatred for a former wife who had left him for another man.”

Sana Muhammad, also known as Devi Unmathallegadoo
PA

Unmathallegadoo, of no fixed address, was convicted at a re-trial.

A previous trial collapsed after it emerged that a member of the jury had been speculating that the defendant may have been suffering from mental illness, despite hearing no evidence of it.

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