ALLISTON - Kamal Khanna showed no emotion Friday in a Barrie courtroom as a judge sentenced him to four years and four months in prison for viciously trying to kill his 14-year-old daughter in 2008.

Justice Michelle Fuerst sentenced Khanna to eight years in prison, but credited him 44 months for the 22 months he has already spent in custody.

As court revisited impact statements read last month by the victim, Ashna Khanna, now 15, her mother Sangeeta Khanna broke down into tears.

She was flanked by supporters who comforted her as the judge detailed how her husband chose a 12-centimetre kitchen knife because he thought it would do the most damage.

Ashna suffered numerous stab wounds at the hands of her father while still in bed March 4, 2008.

She woke up to her father standing over her. He stabbed her repeatedly in the face, head, chest and abdomen, punched her and forced his hand down her throat. In terror, Ashna managed to flee to her younger sister's room, but Khanna chased her and continued the onslaught.

The younger girl ran to a neighbour's for help and called police, then called her mother, who had left for work a short time earlier.

In her own impact statement, Sangeeta Khanna detailed the horror of receiving that phone call.

Her daughter told her, "Daddy's killing Ashna."

"I came home to see my daughter on the stretcher in a pool of blood," Khanna said. "I wasn't allowed to hug her. I have never felt more helpless in my life."

During Ashna's recovery, each night as she helped her daughter apply cream to her scars, she was reminded of the attack.

"Every time I applied the cream I would feel the knife going into me and piercing through my body," she said.

Ashna has suffered lasting impacts from the attack, including a loss of peripheral vision in her left eye and the ability to smell. She worries the injuries and scars will be long lasting and suffers immense emotional damage.

"When I am alone, I strip and look at my body in the mirror. Tears roll down my cheeks. I am damaged and scarred," Ashna said. "I know they will never completely disappear, always reminding me of what I lost. Of what daddy did to his little girl."

However, Ashna remains strong and said she wants people to know what happened to her and her family.

Relationships between her and her mother and younger sister became strained after the attack, but now she has days where she wakes up "feeling happy and loved."

"I was shattered, but I am pulling through," Ashna said. "I lived because my pain and suffering will help others someday. How I coped will give others hope."

"I will make my life the way I want it."

Kamal Khanna was a banker who graduated with an MBA and moved to Canada from India in 1982. The family moved to Alliston from Newmarket in 2000.

Hours after the stabbing, he admitted to police that he used a knife and intended to kill his daughter. He pled guilty to the attack in September.

He said he had been under stress because his wife wanted to leave him, his mother died and he had been in a car accident less than a month before he attacked his daughter.

The court heard he suffered from schizophrenia and often refused to take his medication, but the judge ruled that his illness did not spark the vicious attack on Ashna.

The family has asked for no contact from Khanna, but retains the power to contact him if his daughters want to seek reconciliation.

He will eligible for parole in two years.