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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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
