Jailed for daughter-in-law’s murder, British Sikh woman freed after 16 yrs
LONDON: An 86-year-old BritishSikh woman, imprisoned for the murder of her daughter-in-law in a so-called “hate crime” 25 years ago, has been released from jail after 16 years.
Bachan Kaur Athwal was found guilty of ordering the murder of her 27-year-old daughterin-law, Surjit Kaur Athwal, after being lured to India in 1998. According to The Sun newspaper, it has only emerged this week that she was freed in August last year.
She was ordered to serve a minimum of 20 years in prison by judge Giles Forrester, but the Parole Board recommended that Athwal, said to have been in poor health, should be released on licence four years earlier, the newspaper said.
Bachan Kaur was jailed alongside her son Sukhdave in 2007 for organising the murder. The Parole Board reportedly rejected concerns raised by the UK ministry of justice after she allegedly slapped her daughter during a prison visit and assaulted a member of staff in May last year.
In Athwal’s appeal, the prison offender manager said that before the onset of dementia, she had not been aggressive, the newspaper reported.
Surjit Kaur had failed to return to her home in Hayes, west London, after a trip to a family wedding in India. Athwal accompanied her daughter-inlaw on the trip in December 1998. The Old Bailey court in London was told during the trial how Surjit was forced to marry Sukhdave at 16.
She was bullied by the family during her marriage and later murdered due to fears that she was planning on divorcing her husband. Jailing the mother and son in 2007, the judge said the murder was “unspeakable”.