A 65-year-old woman from the canton of Zurich was sentenced on Tuesday to four years in jail for abducting her severely disabled husband to India and abandoning him there, where he died, to save costs for his care.

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The cantonal high court increased a previous two-year suspended sentence imposed by a lower court against the woman, a currency trader from Bassersdorf, after new information came to light.

The woman took her husband out of a Swiss retirement home and travelled with him to India, where she left him in the care of a family in the Punjab.

However, the 74-year-old suffered from dementia and was severely disabled following a suicide attempt, the court was told, according to a report from the 20 Minuten newspaper.

The court found that the home in Punjab was not equipped to provide the medical care necessary for the man, who died nine months afterwards in November 2008, the newspaper said.

The woman returned back to Switzerland several days after bringing her husband to India and never contacted him again.

After the man died, she was accused of abduction by federal authorities and spent 170 days in detention.

In a first trial she was found guilty and given the suspended sentence, although all parties appealed the decision and the sentence.

In the cantonal high court, the prosecution had sought a seven-year jail sentence against her.

The court rejected the woman’s argument that she had done what was best for her husband.

It concluded that a case of kidnapping was proven, noting that the victim was “no longer of sound mind’ when he was transported to India, 20 Minuten said.