Four years after 27-year-old Tharshika Jeganathan was fatally attacked by her estranged husband with a machete as she was walking home from the bus in Scarborough, Sasikaran Thanapalasingam has been sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.
During a brief sentencing hearing Tuesday morning, Karunsa Parameswaran, read a victim impact statement to the court, calling her friend “a kind-hearted soul.”
“Tharsi didn’t deserve the way she died but I’m glad justice is being served today,” she said.
Jeganathan’s family was on Zoom, watching the hearing from Sri Lanka.
Parameswaran, who was the last person to speak to Jeganathan on the phone on Sept. 11, 2019, said she heard her take her last breath.
“I am scarred by her screaming voice in fear. That will forever haunt me and replays in my head,” Parameswaran said.
She said the screams were so traumatizing that she couldn’t sleep for the first month after Jeganathan passed away. Parameswaran said she has also had to seek therapy to deal with her grief.
In May, Thanapalasingam was found guilty of first-degree murder, after a judge-alone trial.
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According to an agreed statement of facts, Jeganathan was captured on video surveillance near Ellesmere Road and Morrish Road, getting off a bus before being chased by a man who was wielding a machete.
The video showed Jeganatahn being attacked and killed in broad daylight, collapsing just two driveways from the basement apartment where she lived. It was an agreed fact that Thanapalasingam was the man seen attacking Jeganathan.
Parameswaran testified at trial that she was talking on the phone with Jaganathan when she heard a scream and the phone drop.
Court heard that just three weeks after Jeganathan arrived in Toronto in February 2017 to join her husband, whom she had wed in an arranged marriage in India more than a year earlier, Thanapalasingam was arrested for assault and Jeganathan moved out.
Thanapalasingam was arrested three times between April and September 2017 for failing to comply with bail conditions that he had no contact with his estranged wife.
Before handing down her sentence, Madam Justice Anne Molloy gave the offender, now 37, an opportunity to address the court.
Through a Tamil interpreter, Thanapalasingam who has been in custody since his arrest, said that the marriage was a means of getting citizenship in Canada and that his wife disliked him because he was from a village and she was born in the city.
“This marriage was a marriage of convenience, using me to come to Canada,” Thanapalasingam yelled in Tamil as he wagged his finger. After telling the court about how his wife leaving him sent him into depression, which is why he started using alcohol, Justice Molloy told Thanapalasingam to sit down.
The judge then sternly addressed the offender. “Mr Thanapalasingam. You are solely responsible for the misery you brought on your family. None of it is the fault of your victim. I watched you on video hacking that poor woman to death. It was an act of savagery such as I’ve never witnessed and I’ve seen a lot of horrible things. I have found you guilty of first-degree murder,” Molloy said, calling it a cold-blooded deliberate act.
Thanapalasingham was then sentenced to life in prison and told he won’t be eligible for parole for 25 years after his arrest. Molloy told the offender this is required by law in Canada by law and said that “it is most deserved in this case.”
Thanapalasingam was also given a lifetime weapons ban and has been ordered to provide his DNA to the national DNA databank.
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