Silicon Valley tech CEO admits beating software engineer wife, offered just 13 days in the clink

45 times

It is one of a number of disturbing recordings that Rastogi provided to the court last year to defend her position that her life was under threat. The Daily Beast has posted three of them online.

In another recording, Gattani is heard telling Rastogi that he is going to spend all day pressuring her to make sure she resigns from her job "even if it takes the entire day, whether it's fighting, pushing you around snatching your phone. Or whatever."

On the last recording, he tells her, seemingly quite calmly, that he wants to see her murdered and could imagine how someone could stab someone 45 times. On another tape, her three-year-old daughter is asked pleading for Gattani to stop hitting her mother.

Rastogi took the threats seriously enough to create a will and obtain life insurance so that her daughter would be provided for if she was killed.

Finally, she plucked up the courage to go to a lawyer who advised her to go to the police. Soon after Gattani was arrested at work.

During the course of the initial hearings – which Rastogi was encouraged not to attend and so did not – the seemingly clear evidence of domestic abuse was downplayed.

Pleas

The main charge against Gattani was reduced from felony assault to felony accessory – an accessory to a crime that only he could have carried out – to which he pleaded "no contest." He also pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor of "offensive touching."

The plea deal was reached between assistant district attorney Steve Fein and Gattani's lawyer. Fein told the Daily Beast that Rastogi did not object to the deal with he outlined it to her – something she fiercely denies, especially since the felony charge may be removed from his record after three years of probation. Neither Gattani nor his lawyer, defense attorney Mike Paez, will speak about the case.

Rastogi is now seeking a divorce from Gattani and read her victim-impact statement to the court in an effort to persuade the judge to impose a stronger sentence (since he had pleaded "no contest", it is up to the judge to decide on the appropriate punishment).

The judge was not in court that day, but her stand-in, Rodney Stafford, was shocked by its contents and decided to put off the sentencing until Judge Allison Danner returned from holiday and promised to provide her with a copy of the statement by way of explanation.

In the most striking part of her statement, Rastogi bemoans her situation: "I feel fooled not just by a convicted criminal, aggressor, wife beater, batterer, that I unfortunately married - the worst mistake of my life - but by this court as well. With all due respect to the system... I stand fooled, disgraced and ridiculed as a victim."

The sentencing of Abhishek Gattani, case B1687324, is now scheduled for May 18. ®