Wealthy Swiss woman jailed for dumping husband in India, causing death

A wealthy woman has been jailed for four years in Switzerland for dumping her 74-year-old disabled husband in India during a "holiday of a lifetime".

The 65-year-old banker showed her wheelchair-bound husband videos of "palm-fringed beaches and luxury hotels" to convince him to come on the trip to India.

The woman - who had been paying 6,000 pounds a month in care bills - then took him to a poverty-stricken suburb of New Delhi and paid a family 1,500 pounds a month to take him in, British newspaper the Daily Mail reported.

She then jetted home alone to continue her life of luxury in Zurich, a court in Winterthur was told.

But nine months after the trip in January 2008, the husband died due to "lack of care and poor hygiene" and his body was cremated and thrown into a river, it was heard.

The scam was exposed when her Indian "carers" contacted the Swiss authorities to inform them that the man had died.

During the trial, the woman - who can't be named for legal reasons - insisted her actions had been in her husband's best interests due to the "warm climate" in India, the report said.

But a prosecutor told the court: "Her act was the utterly cynical disposal of an old and disabled person to save money.

She had even shown her husband videos and books on India to sell the trip to him as a "holiday of a lifetime".

"But instead he died alone in a strange land, without familiar faces around him and with no possibility of communication with his new carers."

The woman was jailed for six months after an initial trial last year, but prosecutors appealed the sentence and she was jailed for four years this week for kidnapping.

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