Man jailed over neighbour’s murder

An Australian man who raped and strangled his Indian student neighbour and  threw her body into a canal in a suitcase has been jailed for 45 years for the murder. Daniel Stani-Reginald, had plotted to rape and murder a woman for years  before choosing Tosha Thakkar, a 24-year-old accounting student who lived  in an adjoining room at his Sydney boarding house, the Supreme Court heard. He read thousands of internet articles on serial killers and sex attackers before  assaulting Thakkar in March 2011 and throttling her with a cable in a crime   described by judge Derek Price as "extraordinarily cruel". "The last minutes of her life must have been horrifying. This was a terrible  way for the deceased to die," Price told the court on Friday. After he killed Thakkar, Stani-Reginald, who pleaded guilty, stuffed her  body in a black cloth suitcase, took a taxi to a nearby canal and tossed it  into the water in broad daylight, Price said. He had shown no remorse and had poor prospects of rehabilitation, the judge  said, ruling he was likely to offend again and was a danger to the community. Though his father had murdered his mother in his presence when he was 10  years old, leaving him a state ward, psychiatrists who examined Stani-Reginald  found no evidence of mental illness. Price jailed Stani-Reginald, of Sri Lankan descent, for a maximum 45 years,  30 years of which must be served without possibility of parole, stopping  short of the life sentence sought by prosecutors. Thakkar's family were disappointed with the term. "We have lost Tosha forever. We're not going to get her back, so we were   expecting a life sentence," said cousin Pratik Thakkar. A spate of violent crimes against Indian students in Australia in recent years  strained diplomatic ties between the two countries and prompted street protests,  damaging Australia's reputation and seeing foreign enrolments dive.