He ran a pizzeria in south London before moving to Derby, where he was a local leader of the Sikh community. She was a graphic design student and manager of an Argos chain store. They married and settled in the UK in 2005, had two British children and often spent holidays in India, where the unthinkable happened seven years ago…
He, Sukhjeet Singh, 34, was found dead in Shahjahanpur, his throat slit with a knife in his own bed. She, Ramandeep Kaur Mann, 38, was arrested on suspicion of murder along with her lover Gurpreet Singh (her husband’s childhood friend). The two were tried this week and she has become the first british mother sentenced to death in India.
The news has caused a stir in the United Kingdom and has prompted the intervention of the Foreign Office, which has contacted the Indian authorities and provided legal support to the British citizen in an unprecedented case. Her sister, Kalbir manpublicly defended her innocence, ensuring that Ramandeep is innocent, that she was happy in her marriage “for love and not arranged” and that she has been framed by third parties “in a nightmare” since the tragic family vacation.
During the trial, it emerged, however, that Ramandeep had asked her husband for a divorce and had maintained a extramarital relationship with Gurpreet Singh for over a year, and had even vacationed in Dubai together.
The most chilling moment of the trial came when prosecutor Shripal Varma revealed the testimony of one of the couple’s sons, Arjun, who claimed that his mother and her lover killed his father while he slept. “The son woke up when he heard noise in the room and saw his mother sitting on his father’s body and trying to suffocate him with a pillow,” said the prosecutor, who added that the mother put sedatives in her husband’s dinner to ensure that he fell asleep, while allowing his lover entry into the house.