A stalker threatened to ‘carve’ his victim and ‘take her heart as she had stolen his’.

Oxford Brookes student Sahil Bhavnani made the terrifying threats in a 100 page letter delivered to the nursing student’s door in March.

The 22-year-old, who claimed to have copied the violent messages from poetry he’d found online, told the woman he knew she might ‘try to leave him’ and added: “My plan B is already in existence.”

That plan consisted of carving her face and ‘kissing away’ her tears, chaining her hands behind her back, feeding her every day and giving her ‘plenty of water’.

The sick engineering student said he might have to break her legs. “I might not be very strong but I’m positive a crowbar would do the trick,” he said.

In another extract from the rambling letter, read to Oxford Crown Court by prosecutor Cathy Olliver, Bhavnani crowed: “I’m being quite literal when I say I’ll take your heart as you have stolen mine.”

The Hong Kong native’s victim said in a victim personal statement that she was terrified of Bhavnani raping her. He’d repeatedly told her of his desire to have children with her and that he thought she would make a good mother.

He had been remanded in custody in October after trying to contact his victim when he received a text from an unknown number accusing him of being a stalker.

Richard Davies, defending, said his client’s father was so worried about his son he’d flown over from Hong Kong for the sentencing hearing. The family hoped to take the man back to Asia to put some distance between him and his victim.

They had a meeting planned with Oxford Brookes officials later this week to discuss whether Bhavnani could continue with his studies.

Judge Nigel Daly put the case back until next Tuesday to await the outcome of the meeting with the university.

He told Mr Davies he had concerns about imposing a suspended sentence with no conditions to work with the probation service.

“If I were to say, ‘well, I’ll pass a suspended sentence with nothing attached to it’ and then he didn’t go away he would be getting very little in the way of supervision,” Judge Daly said.

“I am concerned not necessarily about his mental health, although I can see he’s been treated for depression.

“But I don’t know if this is a case of extreme immaturity where he will grow out of it and realise that everybody has disappointments in love and they just have to put up with it and put it behind them or if there is a genuine problem here.”

On Monday, the court heard Bhavnani had developed an infatuation with his victim – a nursing student – in 2020. She repeatedly said she was not interested in him romantically.

He continued to pester her, leaving flowers, a bottle of Sambuca and card outside her student house in February.

On Valentine’s Day he was back with a bunch of flowers and other gifts, begging on the doorstep: “Please, I love you, she needs to hear it.”

The following month, her housemates opened a package sent to their digs that contained 100 pages of what prosecutor Ms Olliver described as ‘incredibly worrying’ messages.

Interviewed by the police, he gave a prepared statement acknowledging he’d been ‘very foolish’ and made a ‘massive error of judgement’. The quotes in the letter were from poetry he’d found online and were not things he would normally said, he told detectives.

Bhavnani, of James Wolfe Road, Oxford, pleaded guilty to stalking. He had no previous convictions and was bailed to return to court on November 16 for sentence.

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