5 Indian-origin men jailed for killing Sikh man
London, June 26: Five Indian-origin men have been jailed here after being found guilty of killing a Sikh man in a vicious and "shocking revenge attack" for sleeping with the wife of one of them.
The gang used swords, hammers and baseball bats to hack Sukhjinder Singh, also known as Gurinder Singh, to death on a Southall street in July 2016. The men had been convicted of the brutal murder earlier this month, Get West London reported.
Amandeep Sandhu, 30, from Southall and Ravinder Singh-Shergil, 31, from Tipton, were found guilty of Singh's murder. According to the Old Bailey Court, Sandhu received life imprisonment with a minimum of 26 and a half years in prison and Singh-Shergil also received life imprisonment with a minimum of 26 years and 9 months in prison at a hearing on Friday.
Vishal Soba, 30, from Hayes was found guilty of manslaughter and assisting an offender. Kuldeep Dhillon, 27, from Hayes, was convicted of manslaughter and intimidating a witness.
Soba was sentenced to 16 years in prison and Dhillon was sentenced to 16 years imprisonment last week.
The fifth man from the gang, Palwinder Multani, aged 36, from Hayes, already pleaded guilty on November 10, 2017, to manslaughter and assisting an offender in the case. He became a witness for the prosecution.
Multani was sentenced to 4 years and 6 months in prison last week.
The trial heard that Kuldeep Dhillon and the victim Gurjinder Singh used to live together during 2008 and 2012. However, when Dhillon found that Singh was sleeping with his wife, they fell out, leading to the revenge attack for the adultery.
"The nature of weapons used and ferocity of the attack, it is obvious you intended to kill," said Judge Christopher Moss after a trial heard how the men chopped off the victim's fingers with knives and swords and went on to attack him with a wooden club and a hammer in Southall in 2016.
Earlier, the court heard how the gang members used a multitude of weapons that included knives, swords and baseball bats to attack the victim.
The court was told during the trial that as far back as August 2013, there was rivalry between the victim and a group of men within the local Southall-based British Sikh community.
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Union government assumes full control over TV ratings, TRAI role curtailed: Report
New Delhi: The Union government has assumed full control over television audience measurement, removing the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) from oversight of the ratings system that underpins the country’s ₹36,000 crore television advertising market, according to a report published on Wednesday.
The report in Mint said the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) now has exclusive authority over the framework governing how television ratings are measured and regulated. TRAI had been entrusted with oversight of TV ratings in 2012 during the UPA government’s tenure. TRAI is no longer mentioned in the relevant policy document, effectively vesting sole authority in the MIB.
The report said TRAI will continue to regulate other aspects of broadcasting, including channel pricing, advertising caps, interconnection and distribution norms, service quality and compliance standards. Its role in determining how ratings agencies track viewing behaviour has been withdrawn.
Television Rating Points (TRPs), which reflect viewership patterns, guide advertisers in deciding where to allocate spending across channels and time slots.
A government source quoted in the report said the ministry could modify TRAI’s decisions even when the regulator oversaw broadcasting.
A former CEO of Prasar Bharati told the newspaper that the MIB has historically regulated rating agencies through licensing and guidelines, and by holding them accountable under existing norms.
During its tenure overseeing ratings, TRAI had taken decisions affecting the broadcast sector, which included capping advertising time at 12 minutes per hour following complaints about excessive commercial breaks and it now remains unclear how these matters will be addressed under the revised arrangement.
Satya N. Gupta, former principal advisor at TRAI, was quoted as saying that merging regulatory functions with policy oversight and removing an independent regulator from the process was a retrograde step.
TRAI’s involvement in broadcasting had earlier attracted criticism as well. In 2012, its consultation paper on quantitative limits on television advertising was viewed by some as overlapping with the Advertising Standards Council of India’s code. Subsequent recommendations covering television audience measurement, ownership of news channels and issues such as paid news had also raised concerns among sections of the industry.
Television ratings have faced scrutiny in recent years, including during the controversy involving the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), where officials of the ratings body were prosecuted over allegations of manipulation of viewership data.
