Bid to change killer’s sentence rejected

APPEAL JUDGES have decided against altering a sentence handed to a paranoid schizophrenic who killed a 69-year-old former Wasps rugby player with a large kitchen knife.

Allan Isichei, a Wasps prop during the 1970s and 1980s, was stabbed to death by Gurjeet Lall, 37, while on his way back from a pub, yards from the home he shared with wife Sandra in Southall, west London, in August 2019.

Lall was cleared of murder but found guilty of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility, following a trial at Inner London Crown Court in October.

Judge Usha Karu subsequently ruled he should be detained indefinitely under the terms of the Mental Health Act.

Attorney General Michael Ellis had asked appeal judges to consider the case and argued the sentence was unduly lenient.

He said Lall should have been given a life prison term – with an order allowing him to be detained in a hospital.

But Lord Justice Bean, Mrs Justice Lambert and Mr Justice Calver, who had considered the case at a Court of Appeal hearing in London earlier this month, yesterday ruled against Mr Ellis.

Judges said there is no dispute that Lall “was and remains dangerous”. But they concluded Judge Karu had been entitled to conclude the order she made was the appropriate one to ensure that, as far as possible, the public could best be protected.

The trial heard Lall had been arrested for possession of a knife in 2014 and 2019.

Lall, who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2008, had told jurors he could not remember the last time he took his medication. Following the verdict, Mr Isichei’s family called for an inquiry into why Lall was free to kill just months after he was arrested for carrying a knife.