Convicted Indian-origin banker flees court, found hanged

LONDON - The bodies of a convicted Indian-origin banker and her husband have been found hanging from a footbridge at a busy traffic intersection a day after she fled a London court at the end of her trial.

Senior HSBC bank clerk Bindi Dhanji, 31, fled Southwark Crown Court Tuesday before she was due to be sentenced for stealing 120,000 pounds from two elderly women.

She and a man, believed to be her husband, were found hanged from a footbridge over the busy North Circular Road in north London early Wednesday.

Police said the deaths were not being treated as suspicious - which points to a possible suicide pact - and that the next of kin have been informed.

Dhamji claimed she needed the money to pay a man she was not prepared to name who she said had threatened her with violence.

She faced up to six years in jail after admitting plundering 60,000 pounds each from the accounts of two aged women over a period of four years while working at HSBC branches in west London.

With one account, she stole for 10 months after the woman had died. Her second victim was a woman in her 80s whom she had befriended and bought flowers and chocolates.

Dhanji’s lawyer told the court after she went missing she “clearly seems to have panicked” about the sentence that awaited her.

“She seemed to be, I thought, fairly stoical about the outcome. Her husband took a different view. He placed too much reliance on the pre-sentence report,” he said.