By Khushwant Singh, Court Reporter

Choking back tears, Navin Jatin Batla told the High Court on Wednesday that he was not going to deny or justify the offences.

He said: 'Doing so will be a bigger crime.'

Instead, the 23-year-old Indian national asked for a lenient sentence.

'If not for myself, then for my mother as she has sacrificed everything including selling her house to pay my legal costs,' he added.

As the anxious mother watched from the public gallery, Justice Kan Ting Chiu sentenced her only son to a total of 16 years and 16 strokes of the cane for stabbing his ex-girlfriend's father and two maids in June 2006.

The judge told Batla: 'You came here to do a course in marine engineering sponsored by a major shipping company in India. By committing the offences... you have brought tragedy onto yourself and your widowed mother and destroyed everything.'

Batla, with his hands clasped in front of him, sobbed quietly.

Things were looking bright when he arrived here in October 2005 to study at the Singapore Polytechnic. A month later, he met Ms Mumta Manik Shahani, 38, a Web designer, at the One Night Stand pub in Clarke Quay.

Asking for leniency, Batla's lawyer, Mr BJ Lean said that his client loved Ms Shahani and her 10-year-old son and wanted to marry her. -PHOTO: CRO

Two weeks later, they were intimate and he would often sneak into her house to spend the night with her. Her father found out and told her to stop seeing the much younger Batla.

She broke up with him on June 29 and an upset Batla bought two knives, four cans of lighter fuel, and cable ties that could be used as restraints.

Using a key given to him by Ms Shahani, he stole into the bungalow in the exclusive Dalvey estate off Stevens Road soon after midnight on June 30. He then went on his stabbing spree.

Asking for leniency, Batla's lawyer, Mr BJ Lean said that his client loved Ms Shahani and her 10-year-old son and wanted to marry her. 'The break-up sent him deep into depression and made him commit these crimes,' Mr Lean said.

The lawyer also produced a report from a psychologist in Mumbai, who had treated Batla since 1997.

Batla's mother, Madam Pooja Batla, 51, who has flown down regularly from Mumbai since Batla was arrested in June 2006, told reporters that she accepted the sentence as her son had done wrong.

'It's been a long wait and now this part is over and I can only look forward to his release,' she said.

Victims badly hurt, had to undergo emergency surgery

Mr Manik Ram Shahani, 72, retired shipping magnate: stabbed in the abdomen, right hand and neck.

Ms Shaw Munni, 37, maid: stabbed in the left abdomen and right elbow.