Mohammed Shamji has plead guilty to second-degree murder in the death of his wife Dr. Elana Fric-Shamji in a Toronto courthouse today.

Sentencing for Shamji is scheduled for May 8 and he faces an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 10 to 25 years. 

The Toronto neurosurgeon was charged with first-degree murder and committing an indignity to human remains.

Dr. Elana Fric-Shamji was murdered in her home in the Bathurst St. and Sheppard Ave. area on either Nov. 30, or Dec. 1 of 2016, according to police. Her body was found in a suitcase in Kleinberg. 

“One of the conversations that should be coming out of this is how do we better support women when they are leaving and planning to leave, no matter what their class background is,” said Farrah Khan, the manager of sexual violence support and education at Ryerson University.

An autopsy revealed that she died of strangulation and blunt-force trauma.

She had also reportedly filed for divorce shortly before she was murdered. 

Shamji has remained in custody since his arrest on Dec. 2 at a coffee shop at Lakeshore Rd. E. and Highway 10 in Mississauga.

Khan said that headlines that focus on her husband Shamji’s profession, rather than her accomplishments are dehumanizing. “She doesn’t belong to him and she is a person that was a well-respected doctor, she was a mother of three,” she said.

Fric-Shamji was a family doctor at Scarborough and Rouge Hospital, and a mother of three. Shamji was a neursosurgeon at Toronto Western Hospital who also held a position as professor of surgery at The University of Toronto.

The couple’s children are in the custody of their maternal grandparents.