Harpeet Aulakh, 32, convicted of ordering two men to murder his wife as she walked to collect children

A man was jailed for at least 28 years today for ordering the murder of his estranged wife, who was hacked to death with a machete in a suburban street as she walked to collect the couple's children.

Harpreet Aulakh, 32, an Indian-born Sikh, arranged the murder after becoming obsessed with the idea he had lost respect among his peers because his wife, Geeta, from a middle-class British Hindu family, had left him and was seeking a divorce.

His 28-year-old wife, a receptionist at a community radio station, was ambushed after work on November 16 last year as she walked the few hundred metres from a bus stop in Greenford, west London, to collect the couple's two young sons from their childminder.

She was attacked on a street corner with a 14-inch machete and suffered appalling injuries to her head and body.

Her right hand was severed as she tried to defend herself.

Also jailed for murder at the Old Bailey was Sher Singh, 19, who wielded the machete under Aulakh's instructions and Jaswant Dhillon, 30, who acted as a look-out. Both received minimum sentences of 22 years.

Jurors were unable to agree a verdict on 20-year-old Harpreet Singh, of Slough, Berkshire, who was alleged to have been the driver. He denies murder and will now face a retrial.

Mr Justice Saunders said: "It was a pointless, cold-blooded killing of a woman about whom no one except Aulakh had a bad word to say."

Sentencing Aulakh to life in prison with a minimum tariff of 28 years, he said: "His reason for wanting Geeta dead was that she had made it clear to him that she was determined to divorce him and he was not prepared to accept that and he was prepared to kill her to prevent it happening. The family has lost a sister and daughter but most importantly the two children have lost a mother."

Aulakh insisted his innocence throughout, pointing to CCTV footage of him drinking in a west London pub at the time of the murder. But the court heard he had carefully planned the killing, at one point offering a group of friends £5,000 to "do a job" for him.

Sher Singh was, police discovered, a naive teenager who came to the UK from India only four months before the killing on a bogus student visa arranged by Aulkah, a petty criminal involved in drugs and immigration scams.

The machete used in the killing, recovered from a canal, was traced to a shop near Aulakh's home. CCTV footage from the store showed him purchasing it just days before the murder.

The court heard he had met his future wife – described as hard-working and honest – at a bus stop in Hounslow when she was a teenager, but her family disapproved of the relationship. They eloped to Belgium and the Netherlands, getting married and starting a family, before returning to the UK.

Aulkah proved an abusive and feckless husband and after a period of separation his wife began divorce proceedings in September last year.

This was the final straw for Aulakh, who had become obsessed with the idea his wife was seeing another man, according to Aftab Jafferjee QC, prosecuting. He added: "Geeta Aulakh was in the process of divorcing him and that would not be tolerated."