Indian-origin cousins jailed in US for murder conspiracy

A US court has sentenced two Indian-origin cousins to 15 years each in jail for conspiring to commit a murder, a media report said.

In August, Prattikumar Patel and his cousin Kalpesh Patel, residents of Tennessee, were held accountable by the Murfreesboro city court for trying to arrange the murder of Prattikumar's wife Krupaben in Rutherford county in 2013.

Circuit court Judge David Bragg sentenced them on the conspiracy charge with a 15-year minimum sentence. They will be eligible for parole after serving 30 percent of their sentence, wgnsradio.com reported on Sunday.

Both men were arrested in September 2013 after they approached a construction worker named Chris Robinson from Rutherford county.

Robinson testified that the Patel cousins asked him to find someone to commit the murder for $50,000.

The construction worker, however, alerted the authorities who set up a taped call with Prattikumar and arrested the duo.

The prosecution later told the court that Prattikkumar wanted to get out of an arranged marriage with his wife but had religious objections to a divorce.