Man who killed wife can’t cash her $50,000 life insurance

A Toronto man stood to collect $50,000 from an insurance company after his estranged wife was slain in 2006.

The only problem was he was the one who had brutally bludgeoned and stabbed her to death.

Scotia Life Insurance Company agreed to pay Ved Dhingra the policy benefit because a court ruled he wasn’t criminally responsible for the killing.

Now a higher court says he can’t have the payout, leaving the cash in court-held limbo.

In 2008, a Newmarket court found that, although Ved Dhingra caved in his wife’s head with a religious statue and stabbed her repeatedly in her Richmond Hill home, he wasn’t responsible for her 2006 death because he suffered from schizoaffective disorder.

Dhingra, who was confined after trial to the Whitby Mental Health Centre, was the only beneficiary named in the $50,000 insurance policy.

But his son Paul, administrator of his mother’s estate, challenged the insurance company’s decision to pay his father the death benefit and asked that it go to the estate instead.

Ved Dhingra then asked Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice to enforce the payment. But last week, Justice Andra Pollak ruled he wasn’t entitled to the money.

“(Dhingra) committed second-degree murder of his ex-wife Kamlesh,” Pollak wrote in her judgment. “Even though he was found not criminally responsible, he still physically committed the crime.”

Pollak continued that “the law is clear that there is no judicial support in Canada for the position taken by (Dhingra) that he is entitled to the insurance proceeds.”

When the payout was challenged, Scotia Life paid the money into a court account, where it remains.

Lina Dhingra said Wednesday her father would appeal Pollak’s ruling.

Paul Dhingra, who discovered his mother’s bloodied body, said Wednesday his challenge was over the principle that no one should be rewarded for wrongdoing.

“It’s not about money for me, it’s about justice,” he told the Toronto Star. “I don’t think people should profit from doing a horrible crime.

“He still did the act. The nature of this crime was very brutal. And at the end, you want to profit from it? Where’s the remorse? Why put your family through this?

“It’s ludicrous.”

Lina Dhingra, who appeared for her father in the civil court proceedings, said the case has “torn our family apart.”

She said her father never wanted the policy money for himself, but wanted to split it between her and her brother Paul’s three children.

She said her father, who was released into the community from the Whitby mental health facility last year, took no part in the recent court hearings.

Paul Dhingra’s lawyer, Vito Scalisi, praised Pollak’s decision.

“Regardless of whether there was intent or not, if someone does something wrong, they shouldn’t be able to profit from their wrongdoing,” he said. “The facts of the case are just brutal. He bludgeoned her, he stabbed her several times and then attempted suicide.

“I think the judge basically thought, as I did, that he shouldn’t be able to get this money.”