A 25-year-old Briton who celebrated after killing an Indian Navy officer and told his friends that he had “done a Paki” has been ordered by a U.K. court to spend at least 18 years in jail for his “racially aggravated” crime.
The victim, Kunal Mohanty (30), was on his way to a restaurant with his friends in Glasgow, Scotland, in March this year when he was attacked without any provocation by Christopher Miller. He was knifed in the neck and left bleeding to his death.
Mohanty, who was due to become a father for the first time, was in Glasgow to appear for an examination at the city’s Nautical College.
During his trial, Miller described it as “botched mugging” but a jury at the High Court handed out a unanimous verdict of murder.
The judge called the murder “incomprehensible” and “evil”.
“Your behaviour after the murder suggested that you were anything but sorry and appeared to be celebrating… The murder was racially aggravated. There can be no justification for slashing the neck of someone who did you no harm... To do so because of the colour of a man’s skin is as incomprehensible as it is evil,” he said adding that everyone in Glasgow and the country should be ashamed of his actions.
Earlier, the prosecution told the court that Mohanty was attacked simply because of the colour of his skin. A doctor said that Mohanty’s injury, which caused an 18-cm hole in his neck, was “one of the worst” he had ever seen.
Prosecuting lawyer Dorothy Bain described it as “an atrocity delivered without mercy”. A defenceless and wholly decent man was killed simply because Miller did not like the colour of his skin, she said.
Miller’s brother Jamie (17), in his evidence, said that Miller told him he had “done a Paki”. CCTV footage showed Miller and his friend John McGregory running through a car park and celebrating as Mohanty lay dying.
Injured
Meanwhile, the police are investigating two separate “racially motivated” cases on a London University campus last week in which six students of Indian origin were injured.
They were among a group of Asian students who were attacked by a gang of African teenagers. The attackers reportedly hurled abuses and threw bricks at the students.
“One Pakistani origin student suffered bruise to his brain and suffered memory loss and has been sent to his home in Luton,” a spokesperson of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies was reported saying.
The injured Indian students were reported to be progressing.
