home detention<\/a>, her lawyer Richard Barnsdale told Justice Mathew Downs that Dahiya was under many stresses and strains at the time.<\/p>\nHe said she had moved to a \u201cstrange country\u201d and was learning a new language, which led her to do \u201cthe unthinkable\u201d.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
She then sat the victim on a yoga mat.<\/p>\n
After attacking the boy with the knife, he became unresponsive.<\/p>\n
She then harmed herself. <\/p>\n
The toddler suffered multiple knife wounds to the neck, including deep lacerations requiring medical treatment, and injuries to his face and wrist.<\/p>\n
He also suffered a subconjunctival haemorrhage, caused by either strangulation, suffocation or sustained neck pressure.<\/p>\n
Justice Downs said the victim might have suffered a brain injury that could have lasting impacts on learning and behaviour.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnsurprisingly, he suffered significant scarring to his neck,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Dahiya told police she had intended to kill the boy. <\/p>\n
She was admitted to Waikato Hospital\u2019s Henry Bennett Centre that day, where clinicians believed she had an adjustment disorder and depressed mood.<\/p>\n
Dahiya was given medication and released three days later.<\/p>\n
No formal psychiatric diagnosis accompanied her discharge. <\/p>\n
She pleaded guilty in July last year but then disputed several facts, including the extent of the injuries and the weapon used.<\/p>\n
\u2018Calculated and grave\u2019<\/p>\n
Crown solicitor Jacinda Hamilton labelled the attack as \u201cgrave violence against a vulnerable child\u201d.<\/p>\n
Dahiya\u2019s intention to kill was self-evident from the injuries, Hamilton submitted.<\/p>\n
It was also premeditated in a \u201cfrankly, brutal way\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n
Citing the most serious wound, a 7cm-long cut, Hamilton said that by itself, \u201con any view of it … was calculated and grave\u201d.<\/p>\n
Hamilton said Dahiya\u2019s subsequent self-harming behaviour was minor compared with the violence inflicted on the child.<\/p>\n
![\"Justice]()
Justice Mathew Downs sentenced Alka Dahiya in the High Court at Hamilton. Photo \/ Jason Oxenham <\/p>\n
She acknowledged Dahiya was dealing with a culmination of stress at the time and was not coping. <\/p>\n
Psychiatrist Dr Peter Dean assessed Dahiya as having an \u201cacute psychological crisis\u201d. Dr Jeremy Skipworth said that it was not a diagnostic term, but rather a term describing stress, absent of an actual mental illness.<\/p>\n
Hamilton pushed for a starting point of up to 12 years\u2019 imprisonment.<\/p>\n
The maximum sentence for attempted murder is 14 years.<\/p>\n
She said she was unable to find any case law of an attack that was similar, \u201cdue to the injuries sustained by [victim]\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fortunate that it\u2019s an attempted murder rather than something else,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u2018The unthinkable\u2019<\/p>\n
Defence counsel Richard Barnsdale accepted the attack involved \u201cextreme violence\u201d, but suggested a lower starting point of between five and six years\u2019 imprisonment.<\/p>\n
He submitted that with Dahiya\u2019s mental state taken into account, an end sentence of home detention should be available. <\/p>\n
Justice Downs asked for Barnsdale\u2019s view on whether it was an \u201cextraordinarily brutal attack\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a very serious attack,\u201d Barnsdale replied. \u201cAnd I\u2019m not sure I can say much to say it\u2019s not a serious attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cI probably have to say, it\u2019s lucky that the victim is alive.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said, after reading the various expert reports, that his client was experiencing a \u201cmomentary psychological problem\u201d.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
She also hoped to become an early childhood teacher.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of this combined would have added to that moment in 2024 when she went through a black period and she got depressed,\u201d Barnsdale submitted.<\/p>\n
He said the attack was a \u201cone-off … an accumulation of stresses and strains of a person leaving their home country\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey all accumulated and they led her to do the unthinkable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Justice Downs accepted that some of the aggravating features overlapped and set an overall starting point of 10 years and six months\u2019 imprisonment. <\/p>\n
He then considered what discount was warranted given her mental state at the time.<\/p>\n
The judge cited Dean\u2019s report, which said Dahiya\u2019s acute psychological crisis appeared to have been driven by low mood and negative beliefs about her self-worth.<\/p>\n
\u201cRepeated 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Subsequently, she believed she was a burden.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
He applied a 24% discount for mental health factors, reducing the starting point to eight years.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou made a sustained attempt on [the victim\u2019s] life in an extraordinarily brutal manner,\u201d Justice Downs told Dahiya.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe could well have died.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou intended he would.\u201d<\/p>\n
He then allowed various discounts, including 15% for her guilty plea, before sentencing her to five years and one month in prison.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today, Dahiya appeared for sentencing in the High Court at Hamilton, where she lost a bid for permanent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[188004,89,110,2511,279592,181,30548,256350,2082,61094,111,43,139,69,90,6289,5161,544,427,1961,13835,1524,1455,1354],"class_list":["post-567964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-alka","tag-attack","tag-brutal","tag-child","tag-dahiya","tag-details","tag-distress","tag-extraordinarily","tag-for","tag-knife","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-readers","tag-sentenced","tag-some","tag-story","tag-this","tag-toddler","tag-waikato","tag-warning","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}