Chew Teck Lye, 42, a flight steward, was jailed for three years on Tuesday for stabbing his wife, Ms Goh Siew Chuen, 33, in their Punggol flat in July last year. He was initially charged with attempted murder but it was amended to causing grievous hurt. He pleaded guilty to the new charge.

A district court heard that the couple married in 2001 but by 2010 divorce proceedings stated and the couple slept in different rooms. At 1.45pm on July 20, Ms Goh, a stockbroker, returned home and was speaking with her elder son, who was eight years old then.

Fearful that she was turning his two sons against him, Chew took out a 30cm-long knife from the kitchen. He stabbed her in the abdomen as she was passing him on her way to her room. He then dragged her by her hair to the door of the flat but stopped when she started screaming. He then climbed onto the parapet of the corridor and threatened to jump off. She called the police.

She called the police and said: "My husband stabbed me in the abdomen and my intestines are out." Paramedics soon arrived and rushed Ms Goh to hospital. She has since recovered.

Defence counsel Subhas Anandan said that both Dr Jaydip Sarkar of the Institute of Mental Health and Dr Tommy Tan, who is in private practice, found that Chew had suffered a "a sudden and grave loss of control of his actions" when committing the offence.

Dr Sarkar also noted in his report that the maid had revealed that Ms Goh would rub chilli powder on the lips of the younger son for speaking to his father.