Grim tales behind numbers
WHAT is more shocking? Is it the fact that 33-year-old Sarah Everard was murdered by a serving police officer, Wayne Couzens, or that 79 women have been killed since her death in early March?
The victims include Sabina Nessa, the 28-year-old primary school teacher, near her home in Kidbrooke in south-east London, on September 17. She is said to be of Bangladeshi origin. A 36-year-old Albanian-origin garage worker, Koci Selamaj, from Eastbourne, East Sussex, struck her repeatedly with a two-feet-long weapon, the Old Bailey was told.
Karen Ingala-Smith, creator of the Counting Dead Women website, has been keeping a tally of women “who have been killed by men (or where a man is the principal suspect)”.
The day after Sarah’s death on March 3, Geetika Goyal, 29, died in a street in Leicester after being stabbed. Kashish Aggarwal, 28, of Wintersdale Road in Leicester, is on trial for her murder.
Also in Leicester, Smita Mistry (Saunders), 32, was found dead at her home on March 23. Frank Farrell, 36, of St Peter’s Road in Leicester, has been charged with her murder.
On June 29, in Coventry, Sukhjit Badial, 73, was the victim of a suspected murder-suicide by her husband, Sewa Badial, 87, director of the popular Badial department store in Handsworth, Birmingham. They are survived by four children and seven grandchildren.
On July 4, in Nelson, Lancashire, Ishrat Ahmed, 52, died in hospital after an attack at home that left her husband, Afaq Ahmed, 55, with serious head injuries. Mohammed Yaqub Malik, 57, formerly of Heights Road, Nelson, but who said he was of no fixed address, has been charged with murder and attempted murder.
Since Sabina’s murder, three women have died. In Wolverhampton, on September 19, Sukhjeet Uppal, 40, was repeatedly stabbed at her home in Tangmere Road, Ettingshall. Jai Singh, 50, who lives in the same street, has been charged with her murder.
On the face of it, it does seem there is a disturbing amount of Asian man on Asian woman violence going on in the community. This would be confirmed by the Southall Black Sisters which has been doing its harrowing work, combating domestic violence in the main, for over 40 years.
There has been extensive coverage of Sarah’s murder. But one question remains unanswered. What made Couzens do it?
Couzens, outwardly a family man aged 48, but with a not-so-hidden deviant streak, has offered not a word of explanation for his behaviour. At his trial he pleaded guilty and was sent to prison for the rest of his life. Perhaps that is best answered by a psychiatrist like Raj Persaud.
Is Couzens a “one-off”? Women walking home late at night appear reluctant to make such an assumption. Sadly, trust in the police has been lost. Probably the grim truth is that despite the near certainty of being caught, some men will kill women. That is a problem for the whole of society to deal with, not just the police – and especially the police after Sarah’s murder.
I heard one woman on LBC suggest a male policeman on his own should lose the right to arrest a lone woman. That seemed a good idea, but then I thought what is a policeman to do if, say, he has spotted a female suicide bomber? Should he wait for a woman police officer as a backup?