R v Khatri [2025] VSC 639

1. Ms Rita Khatri, on 12 June 2025 you pleaded guilty to:

(a) On 26 June 2024, without lawful excuse, recklessly engaging in conduct that placed your then seven-year old son in danger of death by pouring kerosene on him and yourself and in your vicinity lighting a fire. Under s 22 of the Crimes Act 1958, the maximum penalty for this offence is 10 years' imprisonment; and

(b) On 28 June 2024, with the intent of perverting the course of justice, doing an act which had the tendency to pervert the course of justice by prevailing upon Shilpa Mehta to persuade your son to make a statement that the events leading to the attendance of emergency services on 26 June 2024 was all an accident. This is a common law offence and the maximum penalty under s 320 of the Crimes Act 1958 is 25 years' imprisonment.

1. You have sought, through counsel, that I use pseudonyms for both you and your son. I accept that there is a public interest that your son, as a young victim, not be named in these reasons. There will be occasions where it is appropriate to use a pseudonym for an offender to protect the identity of a child victim, however, pseudonyms should not ordinarily be used just to avoid a person guilty of a crime being identified as having been guilty of that crime and there is no evidence before me that your prospects of rehabilitation will be affected if you are named. Here, your son is living overseas with his father and has a different surname. I will not identify in these sentencing remarks the names of your son or first husband. In those circumstances, I do not consider that the risk that your son will suffer detriment as a result of being identified as the victim of your crime is sufficient reason to use a pseudonym.

1. You were born in India in May 1989. You are now 36 years old. In 2014 you married your first husband. You lived in Abu Dhabi. You have tertiary qualifications and worked as a financial analyst. In January 2017, your son was born. On October 2022, you and your first husband divorced and you obtained full custody of your son.
2. In August 2023, you made contact through a dating service with Mr Bharat Sadhwani. Mr Sadhwani also had a child from a previous marriage. You met in person for the first time in Turkey in September 2023, and then moved to Australia in December 2023 where you were married soon after. Mr Sadhwani is an Australian citizen. In February 2024, you applied for a spousal visa with the intention of obtaining permanent residency in Australia. The visa application was sponsored by Mr Sadhwani.
3. It seems that shortly after marrying, your relationship with Mr Sadhwani deteriorated. On 18 June 2024, Mr Sadhwani says, you made a series of telephone calls to child protection, the police and the children's school alleging that he was abusive and an alcoholic. Following this, Mr Sadhwani wrote to you making it plain that he would only communicate with you via email, and that he wanted to end the relationship. He withdrew his sponsorship of your spousal visa, and moved out of your shared home.
4. Over the next week, you and Mr Sadhwani exchanged emails which discussed, variously, your relationship, your visa, family violence intervention orders and money that you say you were owed. In these emails, you said, among other things, that you wanted to reconcile with him. However, on 23 June 2024, Mr Sadhwani applied for a family violence intervention order against you, and you then applied for a family violence intervention order against him. These proceedings were both before the Werribee Magistrates' Court on 26 June 2024 and applications were granted that morning.

D Circumstances of the offending - the first charge

1. On that same day, your son, who was then only seven years old, attended primary school. You were then 35 years old. After school, at about 4pm, you took your son to Bunnings Warehouse in Hoppers Crossing. You asked a staff member where you could find kerosene. You seemed calm during this interaction. You purchased two four-litre bottles of kerosene. You and your son left Bunnings Warehouse and returned to the family home.
2. You made dinner for your son, and the two of you then went to bed in your bedroom. While in bed, you asked, 'Do you want to play a game?' and your son agreed. You then said, 'Let's go outside' and you went into the hallway. You directed your son to remove his clothing, which he did except for his underwear. You also removed your own clothing except for your underwear. You poured the kerosene you had recently purchased over your son and over yourself. Your son felt his skin burning from the kerosene. By now, you and your son were in the kitchen. You lit a match and set fire to your clothing and a floormat near the kitchen sink. You were crying. You told your son to 'Go next to the fire', but he refused to do so. You were circling the fire and your son could see the flames increasing. CCTV taken from your house captures some audio but not visual images of what transpired next. You told your son, 'Sit here' and 'Don't move from me'. Your son was screaming, crying and yelling, 'Don't do this' and 'Why are you putting fire on me?'. He said that you were hurting him. The CCTV suggests that the offending had started by 5:49pm. The fire alarm had started by 5:56pm. At about 5:59pm, your son ran from the kitchen and found your mobile phone. He called triple zero. You tried to hang up the phone. You tried to pick up your son and take him back to where the kitchen was on fire, saying 'Get here'. In the recording of the triple zero call, your son can be heard saying, 'Our house is burning' and 'Mummy, stop'. The CCTV suggests that, by this time, smoke was beginning to fill the house.
3. Your son managed to run out of the house towards a passing car. He clung to the passenger window and asked the driver to call police, saying that you were trying to kill him and he needed help. By this time, you had also come out of the house, and were walking towards your son. You said, 'What are you fucking doing, why are you doing this to me' and grabbed your son and tried to pull him off the car. The driver called triple zero. You were both 'wet and shiny' from the kerosene.
4. At 6:06pm, firefighters attended the house in response to the triple zero call made by your son. Smoke was coming from the house, and a smoke alarm was activated. Firefighters entered the house and found a fire of approximately 60cm x 60cm in the kitchen, which they extinguished. It seems that police officers arrived at the house shortly afterwards. They spoke to you, and you told them you had been trying to hurt yourself and your son, and that you 'had nothing left to live for'.
5. Your son was taken to the Royal Children's Hospital and treated for kerosene burns to his body. You were arrested and taken to Werribee Police Station, where you were found to be unfit to be interviewed. You were charged, and have been remanded in custody at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre since 26 June 2024. Your son is now in Abu Dhabi with his father.

E Circumstances of the offending - the second charge

1. On 27 June 2024, a family violence interim intervention order was granted at the Sunshine Magistrates' Court naming your son as the 'affected family member' and you as the respondent. The conditions of the order included a prohibition on you contacting your son, or having another person contact your son.
2. Two days after the fire, on 28 June 2024, you made a telephone call from the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre to Ms Mehta, who was then looking after your son. The call was recorded. You said to Ms Mehta that your son may be present at an upcoming court hearing and that:

[Your son] said a lot of things that day in fear. He was scared and he talked too much... explain him a little that if you want your mother back, then you should stop all this. He should say it was an accident, right? Explain all this to him a bit. But he needs to be made to understand. I don't know what he has said or not. But he was talking a lot that day. I was quiet but he was talking a lot because he was scared. Now these people will also try to get as much out of him as possible, so make him understand a little bit.

3. On 10 June 2025, the Crown filed a fresh indictment in this proceeding and, on 12 June 2025, you pleaded guilty to both charges.

1. The purposes of sentencing are to punish you to an extent and in a manner which is just in all the circumstances, to deter you or other persons from committing offences of the same or a similar character, to establish conditions within which your rehabilitation may be facilitated, to manifest the denunciation by the court of your conduct, and to protect the community.[1] The sentence imposed must reflect the objective seriousness of your offending and be no more severe than is necessary to achieve these sentencing purposes.[2] I am required to have regard to the maximum penalty prescribed, 'current sentencing practices', the nature and gravity of the offence, your culpability and degree of responsibility for the offence, the impact of the offence on your son and his personal circumstances and any injury caused, the fact that you have pleaded guilty and when you so pleaded guilty, your previous character, and the presence of any aggravating or mitigating factors concerning you, or other relevant circumstances.[3]

F.1 The charge of recklessly engaging in conduct that placed your son in danger of death

1. Your conduct is, in my view, a serious example of this offence. Your son, by his age and by his relationship with you, his mother and his only family member in Australia at that time, was vulnerable and dependent on you for his safety. He had no real means of protecting himself from your actions. You increased the danger of death to your son by repeatedly asking or directing him to come to you and the fire, after having doused him in kerosene, a flammable substance. The audio recordings reveal how desperately frightened and panicked, and to my mind confused, he was by your actions and what you were telling him to do. The audio recording reveals the level of distress that you inflicted on your child. Much of your yelling and his screaming and crying is indecipherable, but, among other things, your son can be heard screaming and crying, as well as the matters set out above, 'I don't want to' and 'You're hurting me' and 'Let go of me' and 'Stop killing us' and 'Mummy, I don't want to die'. The episode within the house lasted for more than ten minutes, which is a long time for your son to experience that level of intense and confused distress. It is difficult to think of a more stressful event for a child of that age than to be repeatedly asked, or told, by his parent, for no apparent proper reason, to engage in conduct that carried with it, he must have appreciated, the risk of his painful death or at least serious injury.
2. It must be said that by calling triple zero and escaping and seeking help the way he did from the passing motorist, your son showed remarkable courage.
3. Fortunately, your son did not suffer any burns from fire or heat but did suffer some damage to his skin as a result of you pouring kerosene over him for which he received treatment at hospital. No victim impact statement has been provided and there is nothing to suggest that this has resulted in lasting physical damage. I am prepared to assume, however, and even in the absence of a victim impact statement, from the nature of the events and the audio recordings, that the episode was extremely traumatic for your son and likely resulted in a degree of ongoing distress for him both when he remembers these events and when he reflects on his mother and his relationship with his mother.[4] But in the absence of a victim impact statement, I cannot, and do not, sentence you on the basis that it has produced in him any permanent psychiatric injury.
4. Although the offending itself occurred over a relatively short time, it involved a degree of planning and premeditation insofar as you made a specific trip to Bunnings Warehouse earlier that day to purchase the kerosene to use as an accelerant. It was a thought out, planned, premeditated action. It was submitted on your behalf that something could be made from the fact that you only used about 1.6 litres of the kerosene. I do not see this as being of any real significance given that that amount was sufficient, in the circumstances, to place your son in danger of death.
5. You were initially charged with recklessly engaging in conduct that endangered life, but on 11 November 2024 you were also charged with attempted murder. You were initially assessed as being unfit to be interviewed, but later declined to be interviewed. On the morning of the committal, you offered to plead guilty to the charge of recklessly engaging in conduct that placed your son in danger of death. After the committal, a fresh indictment was filed naming only that charge and you pleaded guilty. For the purposes of sentencing, you should be treated as having pleaded guilty prior to the committal. This entitles you to a utilitarian benefit because it saved (or would have saved) the community the expense of a committal and a trial, and your son the distress of having to be cross-examined.
6. I accept that you committed the offence at a time of great personal stress for you: your second marriage had broken down, your expectation of being supported by your second husband and your prospects of obtaining a visa to remain in Australia had both disappeared, you had no source of income, and you had no family support in Australia. You were facing having to leave Australia and return to Abu Dhabi or India where you could work (your second husband had offered to pay for you to relocate overseas). I accept that this combination of circumstances materially contributed to your decision to attempt to set you and your son on fire and that your actions were a statement of some sort. In this sense, I accept your counsel's submission that your offending was committed in circumstances of desperation rather than malice. However, in order to make the statement you wished to make, you exposed not only yourself to danger, but you also exposed your son to an appreciable risk of death.[5] You put your own desire to make a statement ahead of the safety of your child.
7. I note, and have regard to, the fact that you have no criminal record and it is not alleged that you had ever previously mistreated your child.
8. The issue of remorse, in the sense of your accepting full responsibility for your offending, is, however, complex. The case against you was strong and your plea of guilty, to be treated as if entered after the investigations had taken place and the evidence collected but before the committal, does not compel a finding that you are remorseful. I accept that you regret your actions, but I do not consider that you have accepted full responsibility for your conduct and the wrongfulness of your conduct. You continue to see yourself as a victim of circumstance and to evaluate these events from your own perspective, rather than from your son's perspective. You continue to assert that you did not intend to cause harm to yourself or your son, which has an air of unreality or denial about it in light of the likely consequences of what you were trying to do. The clinical psychologist who examined you at the request of the Law and Advocacy Centre for Women on 10 and 12 August 2025, Ms Carla Lechner, opined that you exhibited 'features of Complex PTSD ... and of Borderline Personality Disorder'. The post-traumatic stress disorder is associated with your childhood, when you were subjected to sexual abuse by extended family members and did not feel safe until you attended boarding school. The features of borderline personality disorder are 'characterised by affective instability, engagement in risky, impulsive behaviours, fear of abandonment/being alone and relationship instability.' Ms Lechner did not formally diagnose you with either condition, but opined:

Ms Khatri appears lacking in insight to some degree and can only view her actions from her perspective rather than judge them from [an] onlooker's point of view.

She presents as cognitively capable of reflective and consequential thinking but finds it hard to take perspectives other than her own particularly in respect of her offending behaviour. Instead, she was inclined to deflect questions about her offending and focus on the wrongdoings of her husband and how this had made her feel totally overwhelmed. She was inclined to blame the lack of help offered when she indicated she was desperate ... She ... has high emotional dependency needs and is destabilized when these needs are not met.

...

Subsequently she has found it hard to own her actions as it creates too much cognitive dissonance, that is, she cannot reconcile her actions with that of a loving mother hence she is inclined to minimise what the potential outcome could have been. She does admit that she was totally overwhelmed and wanted to "put my brain on rest".

1. Consistently with this, in a 'letter of apology' you provided the Court on 5 September 2025, you said you were 'disappointed as the system failed' you, and you refer to the 'suffering' as being suffering that you and your son experienced, as if you were both victims, rather than to the suffering that you caused your son. You say that 'nothing could be worse than being a victim, then handcuffed and put into prison'.
2. I have regard to the fact, referred to earlier, that this offending took place at a time when you were under great personal stress and this, along with the difficulty that you will now face re-engaging with your son, moderates the importance that would otherwise have to be given to specific deterrence. There is no evidence, however, that you committed your crime as a result of any particular mental illness that afflicted you at that time that otherwise diminishes your moral culpability or means that you are not a suitable 'vehicle' for general deterrence.[6] Ultimately, however, and notwithstanding the stressful situation in which you found yourself at the time, your decision to act as you did - what you hoped to achieve - remains somewhat unexplained.
3. I was told, and accept, that you have been isolated in custody for your own protection owing to the nature of your offence, and have experienced a degree of racial or cultural abuse from other prisoners. These factors, which are likely to be ongoing, will create additional difficulties for you in custody and this is a factor to which I also have regard. I also take into account that by losing contact with your son for at least a significant period of time you will suffer a degree of extra-curial punishment.
4. It is difficult to identify any current sentencing practices for this offence in like circumstances. In DPP v Deakin,[7] a mother called a child protection worker and told them that she had tried to drown her two-year old son by holding his head underwater for about five seconds while bathing him. Hollingworth J did not sentence the mother to more than time served, which was 251 days. However, in that case the mother had depression and a substance abuse disorder and a psychotic condition that manifested in auditory hallucinations, and had attempted suicide the day before. The father of the child had been repeatedly and severely physically violent towards her. Her son did not suffer any physical or psychological injuries and the sentencing judge accepted that she was 'genuinely ashamed and remorseful' and noted that, but for her calling child protection, the crime would have gone undetected.[8] In DPP v LK,[9] a 26-year old mother with post-natal depression and a major depressive disorder jumped off a balcony with her daughter who was then 10 months old in an apparent attempt to kill herself. She suffered multiple serious injuries herself, and her child a broken collarbone. She was remorseful. Coghlan J imposed a three-year community correction order, while noting that the offender had already spent about nine months in prison.[10] In both those cases, the moral culpability of the offenders was reduced having regard to their serious psychiatric conditions at the time of the offending. As noted above, there is no evidence to that effect in your case. Finally, I note that in DPP v Bennett,[11] a 23-year old person set fire to a house with people in it. No one in fact suffered any permanent injury and the motivation was not identified. Cummins J sentenced the offender to five years' imprisonment (noting that this was one of three charges for which he was then being sentenced that resulted in a total effective sentence of 12 years' imprisonment).
5. As it currently stands, your visa situation is such that you will not be able to be released on parole and you will be required to leave Australia on your release from custody at the end of your sentence. Under s 5(2AA) of the Sentencing Act 1991, the Court must not have regard to 'any possibility or likelihood' that the period of time an offender will actually spend in custody 'will be affected by executive action of any kind'. Also, your visa status from time to time may change and in that way may depend on executive actions yet to be taken. In these circumstances, I consider it appropriate that I sentence you, and provide for a non-parole period, just as I would for a person with a visa that would allow them to be paroled, in case your visa situation changes.[12]
6. That said, in an appropriate case, the prospect that an offender may be deported after completion of their sentence can be a sentencing consideration.[13] It was not said on your behalf that this was a cause of particular concern or hardship for you - presumably because you have not grown up in this country and have no family here. Nonetheless, I take into account, as a form of extra-curial punishment, but give only little weight to, the fact that you will likely be deported from Australia at the completion of your sentence.
7. Finally, it must be borne in mind that you are being sentenced for recklessly engaging in conduct that placed your son in danger of death - not for intending or attempting to cause him harm.

F.2 The charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice

1. You sought to have the person looking after your child influence your son into telling a falsehood to the investigating authorities - that the incident was an accident - so as to minimise the consequences for you of your offending. This conduct was aggravated by the fact that you sought to manipulate your son into doing this by having the other person tell him that it was necessary that he do this if he wanted 'his mother back'.
2. On the other hand, this offence was constituted by a single phone call to an intermediary made by you at a time of immense stress, and was not accompanied by any actual threats or bribes or conduct of that nature and I treat it as an unpremeditated action. In this way, and although all attempts to pervert the course of justice are serious, it was an action at the lesser end of the spectrum of seriousness.
3. You also pleaded guilty to this offence on 12 June 2025, after the committal but also after the Crown filed a fresh indictment without the charge of attempted murder. The Crown accepted that your plea of guilty should be considered an early plea. I take into account the utilitarian benefit of your plea of guilty to that charge.

1. You have now served some 475 days on remand. Your counsel did not submit that a term of imprisonment was inappropriate, but submitted, in essence, that time served would be an appropriate sentence.
2. I disagree. Taking into account the various considerations set out above:

(a) On charge one, the offence of conduct endangering life, you are sentenced to four years and six months' imprisonment.

(b) On charge two, the offence of attempting to pervert the course of justice, you are sentenced to four months' imprisonment. I direct that two months of this sentenced be served concurrently with the sentence imposed on charge one.

1. The total effective sentence is thus four years and eight months' imprisonment. I set a non-parole period of three years.
2. 475 days of this sentence will be reckoned as time already served.
3. I declare for the purposes of s 6AAA of the Sentencing Act 1991 that but for your pleas of guilty, I would have set a total effective sentence of five years and eight months' imprisonment and a non-parole period of four years.

[1] Sentencing Act 1991 (Vic) s 5(1).

[2] Ibid s 5(3).

[3] Ibid s 5(2).

[4] Cf, eg, Kowski v The King [2024] VSCA 3, [53] (Niall and Boyce JJA).

[5] See, eg, R v Abdul-Rasool [2008] VSCA 13; (2008) 18 VR 586, 599 [53] (Redlich JA, Chernov JA and King AJA agreeing).

[6] Cf R v Verdins [2007] VSCA 102; (2007) 16 VR 269.

[7] [2021] VSC 719.

[9] [2020] VSC 193.

[11] [2004] VSC 207.

[12] Ibid, 292, [16]-293, [19] (Maxwell P, Bongiorno JA and Beach AJA). See also Sentencing Act 1991, s 11(2).

[13] Guden v The Queen [2010] VSCA 196; (2010) 28 VR 288, 294 [25]-295, [30] (Maxwell P, Bongiorno JA and Beach AJA).