Today, Dahiya appeared for sentencing in the High Court at Hamilton, where she lost a bid for permanent name suppression.
She faced a charge of attempted murder after the attack in Ngāruawāhia on July 16, 2024.
In fighting for a sentence of home detention, her lawyer Richard Barnsdale told Justice Mathew Downs that Dahiya was under many stresses and strains at the time.
He said she had moved to a “strange country” and was learning a new language, which led her to do “the unthinkable”.
The court heard it all unravelled on the morning of the attack, when Dahiya grabbed a large meat cleaver, chosen because it was the sharpest she owned.
She then sat the victim on a yoga mat.
After attacking the boy with the knife, he became unresponsive.
She then harmed herself.
The toddler suffered multiple knife wounds to the neck, including deep lacerations requiring medical treatment, and injuries to his face and wrist.
He also suffered a subconjunctival haemorrhage, caused by either strangulation, suffocation or sustained neck pressure.
Justice Downs said the victim might have suffered a brain injury that could have lasting impacts on learning and behaviour.
“Unsurprisingly, he suffered significant scarring to his neck,” he said.
Dahiya told police she had intended to kill the boy.
She was admitted to Waikato Hospital’s Henry Bennett Centre that day, where clinicians believed she had an adjustment disorder and depressed mood.
Dahiya was given medication and released three days later.
No formal psychiatric diagnosis accompanied her discharge.
She pleaded guilty in July last year but then disputed several facts, including the extent of the injuries and the weapon used.
‘Calculated and grave’
Crown solicitor Jacinda Hamilton labelled the attack as “grave violence against a vulnerable child”.
Dahiya’s intention to kill was self-evident from the injuries, Hamilton submitted.
It was also premeditated in a “frankly, brutal way”, she said.
Citing the most serious wound, a 7cm-long cut, Hamilton said that by itself, “on any view of it … was calculated and grave”.
Hamilton said Dahiya’s subsequent self-harming behaviour was minor compared with the violence inflicted on the child.
Justice Mathew Downs sentenced Alka Dahiya in the High Court at Hamilton. Photo / Jason Oxenham
She acknowledged Dahiya was dealing with a culmination of stress at the time and was not coping.
Psychiatrist Dr Peter Dean assessed Dahiya as having an “acute psychological crisis”. Dr Jeremy Skipworth said that it was not a diagnostic term, but rather a term describing stress, absent of an actual mental illness.
Hamilton pushed for a starting point of up to 12 years’ imprisonment.
The maximum sentence for attempted murder is 14 years.
She said she was unable to find any case law of an attack that was similar, “due to the injuries sustained by [victim]”.
“It’s fortunate that it’s an attempted murder rather than something else,” she said.
‘The unthinkable’
Defence counsel Richard Barnsdale accepted the attack involved “extreme violence”, but suggested a lower starting point of between five and six years’ imprisonment.
He submitted that with Dahiya’s mental state taken into account, an end sentence of home detention should be available.
Justice Downs asked for Barnsdale’s view on whether it was an “extraordinarily brutal attack”.
“It was a very serious attack,” Barnsdale replied. “And I’m not sure I can say much to say it’s not a serious attack.
“I probably have to say, it’s lucky that the victim is alive.”
He said, after reading the various expert reports, that his client was experiencing a “momentary psychological problem”.
That was a culmination of her having trouble learning English, her experience in India with a failed marriage and having to give up custody of her daughter, immigrating to New Zealand and entering an arranged marriage.
She also hoped to become an early childhood teacher.
“All of this combined would have added to that moment in 2024 when she went through a black period and she got depressed,” Barnsdale submitted.
He said the attack was a “one-off … an accumulation of stresses and strains of a person leaving their home country”.
“They all accumulated and they led her to do the unthinkable.”
Justice Downs accepted that some of the aggravating features overlapped and set an overall starting point of 10 years and six months’ imprisonment.
He then considered what discount was warranted given her mental state at the time.
The judge cited Dean’s report, which said Dahiya’s acute psychological crisis appeared to have been driven by low mood and negative beliefs about her self-worth.
“Repeated failures of a professional English test, poorly performing business, social and financial worries, high personal expectations, relative social isolation… and stopping her regular exercise routine.”
Subsequently, she believed she was a burden.
Justice Downs said while there have been attempted murder cases that resulted in home detention, everything turned on the facts, along with deterrence and community protection.
He applied a 24% discount for mental health factors, reducing the starting point to eight years.
“You made a sustained attempt on [the victim’s] life in an extraordinarily brutal manner,” Justice Downs told Dahiya.
“He could well have died.
“You intended he would.”
He then allowed various discounts, including 15% for her guilty plea, before sentencing her to five years and one month in prison.
Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for 11 years and has been a journalist for 22.