An India-born father serving a life sentence for killing his toddler sons in Scotland six years ago has launched an appeal against the decision over his undiagnosed mental disorder.
Ashok Kalyanjee was sentenced to at least 21 years in prison by the High Court in Glasgow back in 2009 after pleading guilty to murdering six-year-old Paul and his two-year-old brother Jay by slitting their throats with a knife.
He has now appealed against the sentence at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh, claiming a failure by psychiatrists to identify that he was suffering from a paranoid personality disorder at the time.
He specifically blames an incident when he was thrown out of a library two weeks before the murders that had been preying on his mind and his lawyers claim his guilty plea, instead of one of diminished responsibility, led to a miscarriage of justice.
Judge Lord Carloway, sitting with Lady Dorrian and Lady Paton, heard the four-day appeal last week. If it is upheld next month, Kalyanjee could stand trial for a second time.
According to court reports, the father had collected his sons from his former wife's home in Glasgow and driven down towards a lay-by in Lennoxtown area of Dunbartonshire.
He slashed Jay's throat then turned his knife on his brother as they sat in his Mercedes car in May 2008. He then burned their bodies.
"Kalyanjee is a spineless waster who never took responsibility for anything in his life," the Daily Mirror quoted his ex-wife, GiselleRoss, as saying.
"He was devious and cunning and boasted he knew how to work the system. As far as I'm concerned the trigger was fear of his mother finding out about his drinking and gambling," she added.
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission backed Kalyanjee's claim that despite pleading guilty and having sentence reduced by a quarter, he should have been able to plead to diminished responsibility because of a personality disorder.
