Mother Rekha Kumari-Baker Jailed For 33 Years For Killing Daughters With Kitchen Knives

A woman was jailed for 33 years by a UK court for murdering her two teenage daughters with kitchen knives while they slept, the Sydney Morning Herald has reported.

A hotel waitress, Rekha Kumari-Baker stabbed 16-year-old Davina 37 times, and 13-year-old Jasmine 29 times on June 13, 2007, in what her ex-husband calls "an act of calculated viciousness," the Guardian reported.

The 33-year sentence was one of the longest jail terms given to a woman in recent times, the BBC reported.

David Baker, the 41-year-old woman's husband, said that the woman killed their daughters to hurt him, the BBC added.

She had bought the knives at a local supermarket two days before the attack.

Quoting the ex husband's court statement, the Guardian says:

"Having them taken away from me in such a brutal way and by the woman who was their mother ... has had an incalculable effect," he said in a statement read out at Cambridge crown court: "I am haunted by the horror of the events of that night and probably will remain so for a very long time."

Baker said he was having a hard time getting over his daughters deaths.

The Sydney Morning Herald has reported that Kumari-Baker was apparently upset over her own breakup with a boyfriend and a new relationship her husband had just gotten into.

Kumari-Baker admitted to the killings but argued that she suffered from "diminished responsibility", the BBC reported. The court however took 35 minutes to find her guilty of murder.

Kumari-Baker has already spent more than two years in jail, and will remain there until at least 2040. She will be 72.