London:
An NRI woman solicitor was murdered in Britain by a hitman who was hired by her business partner in a plot to claim a 1.5 million pounds insurance payout.
Vina Patel, 51, died of asphyxiation and a broken neck in a deliberate and murderous contract killing arranged by her colleague John Cort, a court was told.
Despite earning more than 110,000 pounds a year, 54-year-old Cort had thousands of pounds of debts after splashing out on three homes and meals at celebrity haunts following an expensive divorce.
In the weeks before the alleged murder, he put around rumours that he was seriously ill.
This prompted him and Patel, the only partner in the firm Cort and Co Solicitors, to increase the business insurance cover taken out on her life from 500,000 to 1.5 million pounds, the jury heard.
Cort is then alleged to have hired Brian Farrell, 37, from Kensington, West London to murder Patel and make it look like an accident, Nottingham Crown Court was told.
Cort and Farrell deny murder.
Patel's husband and daughter discovered her bruised and with a broken neck at the bottom of a flight of stairs in her office in Leicester on January 15 last year.
There were sign that the lawyer had been suffocated with blue material.
She had then fallen or been pushed down the stairs, or attacked and her body arranged to look like it was an accident, it was alleged.