Posted on the 17th November 2025 in PHTM News

NEWBURY CABBIE JAILED FOR SIX YEARS OVER PSYCHOTIC DELUSIONS IN KNIFE ATTACK ON WIFE

A Newbury taxi driver, Mehmet Balikci, has been jailed for six years for a violent knife attack on his wife, Rachel Parry-Balikci, stemming from his "psychotic delusions" about a non-existent affair with a teenager.

The 57-year-old was sentenced at Reading Crown Court on Tuesday, November 11, after jurors convicted him in January of causing actual bodily harm, common assault, and making threats to kill.

During the trial, the court heard that the controlling husband, married to his victim for 23 years, had become obsessed with the imagined infidelity. Mrs. Parry-Balikci testified that he would repeatedly interrogate her, trying to force a confession.

Recounting the terrifying attack, she told jurors:

  • "He came up very close to me saying: 'Tell me the truth – admit it.'"

  • "He said: 'I’m going to kill you – I’m going to kill you’ – shouting in my face."

  • "I thought he was going to kill me… he took a knife with a foot-long blade from the knife drawer."

Mrs. Parry-Balikci described how Balikci held the knife to her neck, pulling her head back to expose her throat, warning: "If you don’t tell me the truth, I’ll kill you."

She added: "Then he got another knife and held it against my stomach. I grabbed the blade," sustaining a knife wound to her hand and an "egg-sized lump on her head from the beating he gave her."

In a statement at the sentencing hearing, Mrs. Parry-Balikci described "decades of abuse" and the "terrible chain of violence and intimidation" inflicted by her husband.

She said the home, which should have been a refuge, now held reminders of the attack, adding: "I thought I was going to lose my life in a violent and painful way… he used knives from our kitchen… I couldn’t sleep for months."

Defence counsel, Anne-Marie Critchley, argued for her client to receive psychiatric treatment in the community, noting his Turkish Kurdish origin and his work as a taxi driver.

However, the judge, Recorder John Gallagher, rejected this after a probation officer assessed Balikci as constituting "a high risk of serious harm."

Balikci will serve up to half of his six-year sentence in custody and is also subject to an indefinite restraining order preventing him from contacting his wife.


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