Answering to what he described as his “inner voice,” a businessman from Punjab who lost £200,000 worth of property when his shop was attacked and looted in last summer's London riots, has decided to donate the recovered goods to the poor and the elderly.
Brij Sahgal (80), who runs a successful electronics shop in the west London suburb of Ealing, tried to play down the gesture protesting there was “nothing very grand” about it.
“I just listened to my inner voice. My inner voice told me that this is what I should do — and so here I am,” he told The Hindu .
Mr. Sahgal, originally from Jalandhar, laughed when asked whether he was a religious person.
Very spiritual
“No. But I am very spiritual. I am also a very stress-free man. Sometimes I joke that when God built me, he forgot to put stress in me,” he said.
The donation would go to needy individuals, especially “senior citizens,” rather than to a charity.
Mr. Sahgal said he had no grudge against the looters.
“We are back to normal and the people who did this have suffered the most. I don't have any suffering — I don't feel any tension and that's because I am a very relaxed person,” he said.
Do community service
Two men — Santos St. John (30) and Clive Owori ( 24) — who were caught on CCTV fleeing the shop with the stolen goods have been given suspended sentences and ordered to do 200 hours of community service.
“This is a quite poignant case of the owner sitting across the road watching his store being cleared out,” the judge told them.
