Harminder Mattu, 51, denies murdering Paramjit Kaur, 46, in their home
08:22, 17 Mar 2026Updated 08:34, 17 Mar 2026
Paramjit Kaur(Image: WMP)
A husband ‘absorbed by his own self-pity’ after his wife filed for divorce walked into a police station and said ‘I have murdered’, jurors have heard.
Harminder Mattu was ‘consumed by the prospect of divorce’ after his wife Paramjit Kaur told him their marriage of almost 10 years was over, prosecutors say.
The 51-year-old allegedly throttled her in their Oldbury home before stabbing her in the neck, leaving her lifeless body on the floor as he handed himself in at the police station last March.
Ms Kaur, 46, had been looking for a way out of her marriage ‘for many years’, Wolverhampton Crown Court heard.
Opening the case on Monday (March 16), prosecutor Jonathon Barker said: “On one view of the evidence, it appears his life was crumbling around him.
“It appears he was consumed by the prospect of divorce and the effects that that would have on him and how he would be perceived.
“The prosecution’s case is that the defendant had used violence against Ms Kaur before but there was a difference between these occasions and what occurred in March [2025] because we know that these occasions occurred before Ms Kaur had filed for divorce.
“By March 30, things were fundamentally different and whether he was prepared to accept this or not, the reality was he had lost her and their marriage was over.”
Mr Barker added: “He was absorbed in self-pity.”
Mattu, of Swan Crescent, Oldbury, denies murdering Ms Kaur in March 2025.
You can sign up here for all the latest court stories.
Jurors heard how Mattu walked into West Bromwich police station and spoke with a female employee working behind the desk at about 8am on Monday, March 31 last year.
Mr Barker said: “The defendant said to the woman “I’m here to surrender”.
“When asked why, he calmly replied “because I have murdered”.
“When asked who, in other words, who have you murdered, he replied “my wife”.
“When asked where the murder had taken place, he said it had occurred at his home address in Swan Crescent, Oldbury, at approximately 11 o’clock during the evening of the previous day.”
Mattu was then spoken to by a Punjabi-speaking police officer in a side room.
The prosecutor told jurors: “In general terms, the defendant said at that stage that his wife had been killed, that she had compelled him to do it, that it had been done with a small knife, that he had stabbed her, that his wife had initially had the knife.
“[He said] there had been a verbal altercation and that he had got the knife.”
Mattu was then arrested on suspicion of murder, with officers dispatched to the couple’s home.
The porch door and front door were unlocked when police arrived just after 8.20am.
They discovered Ms Kaur’s body on the floor, next to a sofa, with a large black-handled kitchen knife just under the corner of the sofa.
Jurors heard how Ms Kaur had dried blood around her mouth and there appeared to be knife wound to the right side of her neck.
Paramedics arrived at the scene and declared her dead about 10 minutes later, Mr Barker said.
The court heard how forensic pathologist Dr Alexander Kolar found during an examination that Ms Kaur had a stab wound and incised wounds to her neck.
But ‘none of these injuries would have been responsible for her death’, it is said.
He noted petechiae – tiny spots, often red in colour, caused by broken capillaries – on Ms Kaur’s neck, which are said to be ‘unusual’ in cases where two people are ‘fighting’.
There were also no defensive injuries to Ms Kaur’s hands, Mr Barker told the court.
The prosecutor said: “Dr Kolar’s view was that the most likely sequence of events, based upon the medical findings, was that Ms Kaur was initially subjected to an episode of applied neck pressure, resulting in a profoundly unconscious state before she sustained the sharp force injuries.
“She then succumbed to the effects of the applied neck pressure – in other words, it was the pressure to the neck that caused her death.
“He, of course, acknowledges that another sequence of events is possible but that’s where the medical findings take Dr Kolar.
“What is clear is that the knife injuries did not cause Ms Kaur’s death.”
Mr Barker added: “It begs the question, doesn’t it, why this defendant would have strangled his wife and why he then used a knife to stab and cut her.”
Ms Kaur, who was known as Soni, was born in Punjab, India, and moved to the UK between 2010 and 2011.
The couple, who did not have any children, met in 2014 and married in Sandwell the following year.
Jurors heard how Ms Kaur was in the process of leaving her husband when she died and filed for divorce on January 31 last year – two months before her death.
Mr Barker said: “It appears that she was deeply unhappy in her marriage.”
She had initially left the marital home but returned only when Mattu made ‘threats to take his own life’, Mr Barker alleged.
Mattu was assisted in court by a Punjabi interpreter.
The trial continues.
Don’t miss the biggest and breaking stories by signing up to the BirminghamLive newsletter here.