A GAY bank worker who murdered his arranged bride in a pre-planned attempt to hide his sexuality has been ordered to serve at least 21 years behind bars.

Royal Bank of Scotland employee Jasvir Ginday stared down at the floor in the dock as he was told that his decision to strangle Varkha Rani and burn her body using petrol was "unbelievably casual and callous".

Ginday, 29, from Walsall, was unanimously convicted of murder at Wolverhampton Crown Court after jurors heard that he throttled his wife just a month after she arrived in the UK from India.

Ginday was arrested last September after setting fire to Varkha's body in a patio incinerator in his back garden and telling neighbours he was disposing of "general rubbish".

Ginday, who was planning to take up a job with the Financial Services Ombudsman, married his university-educated wife in a ceremony attended by 700 guests in India in March last year.

The 24-year-old victim came to Britain to live with Ginday at his parents' home in Victory Lane five months later, and is thought to have been killed with a metal vacuum cleaner pipe on September 12 last year.

Passing sentence, Judge John Warner told Ginday, who has no previous convictions, that his behaviour towards Varkha before the killing had been a "fundamental deception" of a vulnerable woman living thousands of miles from her home country.

Jailing Ginday for life with a minimum term of 21 years, Judge Warner said: "You are a devious, controlling man."