28 April 2024 , 19:24
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Footage shows the sickening moment a man tried to kill his ex-girlfriend in front of terrified diners.
Jealous Sriram Ambarla, 25, knifed his former partner nine times, including a slash to her neck, at the restaurant she worked at in East Ham, London in March 2022.
Moments before the attack he had been sitting in the diner googling ‘how to kill someone with a knife’ on his phone.
The woman almost died and spent a month in critical care in hospital, undergoing six surgeries.
Ambarla handed himself in to police following the attack and later admitted murder and possession of a knife.
He was jailed for 16 years at at a hearing at the Old Bailey on Thursday and banned from ever contacting her again.
The court heard Ambarla met the victim while studying engineering in Hyderabad in India in 2016.
Sriram Ambarla stabbed his ex partner nine times (Picture: MyLondon/BPM)
But the relationship came to an end in 2019, at a time when Ambarla was physically abusive and threatened to kill himself if she did not stay with him.
They both came to the UK in 2022 to study at the University of East London, where Ambarla continued his threats.
He felt had a hold over her due to a £15,000 debt owed by her brother, the court heard.
In the days before the attack, Ambarla went to the woman’s father’s home and offered to clear the debt in exchange for his daughter’s hand in marriage.
The victim said she was blackmailed by Ambarla, who threatened to reveal their past relationship, which her parents had frowned upon for religious reasons.
Ambarla also accused her of sleeping with other people, even though they were not together, and bombarded her with telephone calls, eventually turning up at her address late at night and barging his way inside demanding to see her.
Ambarla gets up from his table and grabs his ex (Picture: Twitter)
He was pushed outside, but grabbed her phone and ran off, telling her ‘This is not the right decision for us’ and asked for ‘one more chance’.
He turned up again the next morning and banged on the windows before pulling her outside.
After a flatmate slapped him and told him to get lost, he waited outside for another half hour, before leaving.
On the day of the attack he turned up at her work, sat down at a table, and kept ordering things so she would have to serve him.
While there he made a series of disturbing searches on his phone about murder, the court heard.
Ambarla with the knife he attacked her with, as a customer comes(Picture: Twitter)
He typed in questions such as: ‘What happens if a foreigner murders in the UK’, ‘how to kill human with a knife’, ‘how easy is it to kill someone with a knife’, and ‘how to kill someone instantly with a knife’.
Ambarla told police he snapped after overhearing the woman say she wanted to celebrate her break-up.
The victim said he then threatened to kill her if she did not marry him, to which she told him she did ‘not want to live by his rules’.
It was at this point he pulled out the knife and stabbed her repeatedly, continuing even as she collapsed to the floor.
Judge Philip Katz KC said it was clear Ambarla had brought the knife with the intention to murder, telling him: ‘That she did not die, is no thanks to you.
At one point he stabs her in the neck (Picture: Twitter)
‘She was within a hair’s breadth of dying at your hands in a public and terrifying way.’
In the aftermath of the attack, Ambarla left the restaurant and approached police officers, telling them ‘I have stabbed my girlfriend, I have stabbed my girlfriend’.
He would later tell police he wanted to be sent back to India so he could be put to death.
While the court watched the footage of the attack, Ambarla smashed his head against the dock and pleaded for The Old Bailey to stop playing it, saying ‘it will kill me everyday, I can’t see it’.
Staff at the restaurant try to intervene (Picture: Twitter)
Medical evidence of the nine stab wounds his victim suffered, was also heard during the hearing.
The injuries included a 10cm gash to the neck, which penetrated the windpipe, cuts to the chest, arms, back, and abdomen.
A month after her release from hospital she developeda lung infection and had to return.
Looking back, she said she only felt the first stab wound but knew from its ferocity ‘he wanted to kill me on the spot, he slit my throat’.
Two years later the victim has graduated from her master’s course, but is still struggling with panic attacks and fears Ambarla might burst into her bedroom at any moment.
He continues to stab her as she lies on the floor (Picture: Twitter)
She said: ‘I really do not think I can forgive Sriram for what he did to me. I just want him to know when that day comes for his release, I want him to have a good life, but I never want to ever see or hear from him again.’
Two forensic psychologists who assessed Ambarla concluded he was a dangerous offender, including Professor Nigel Blackwood who said ‘further specified offences were conceivable, even likely, with future partners’.
But Judge Katz concluded his sentence would be long enough not to warrant extending it, in the hope Ambarla could address his mental health issues in prison.
Neither psychologist felt Ambarla’s diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder had significantly impaired his judgement during the attack.
A couple with a baby flee the scene as Ambarla continues the attack (Picture: Twitter)
Speaking of the attack, Judge Katz, said: ‘You grabbed her and then launched a sustained and vicious attack which must have been completely terrifying for her,” he said.
‘Even after you reduced her to the floor, having stabbed her already with staff trying to intervene, you repeatedly continued to stab her.”
Jailing him for 16 years for attempted murder, with a 12-month concurrent sentence for knife possession, Judge Katz warned it would be up to the parole board to decide if he is ready for release once he has served his time.
He is also banned from making contact with his victim again through an indefinite restraining order.