24 24 13 February 2021 | The Guardian Weekend13 February 2021 | The Guardian Weekendjury convicted her. But she says she was oblivious to any plan to hurt Singh,
let alone kill him. There was no thought of revenge that night: she had hoped
to put an ugly episode with her former friend behind them. So how did
a teenager with so much to look forward to end up here?Mundill Mahil grew up the youngest child in a conservative, upwardly mobile
Sikh family. Her parents ran a B&B ; her sister was a doctor; one brother went
to medical school before going into IT, while the other became a police offi cer.
Mahil thrived at her girls’ school, making friends and becoming a star pupil. But
she also felt an outsider: while her classmates had boyfriends, traditional Sikh
girls were not expected to socialise with boys. A marriage would be arranged
when the time was right. Occasionally, Mahil found herself lying to her mother
if she knew there were going to be boys present – at the school disco, for instance.
But she was religious herself, with a growing interest in Sikhism. At 17,
Mahil wore a turban and considered becoming baptised ; before that, she had
been to conferences, a meditation course, boot camps and a Sikh martial arts
club. It was at this club that she met Harinder Shoker , a trainee electrician
who went by the name of Ravi. A friendship developed, which Mahil kept
secret. The two were very diff erent. Shoker wore hoodies, smoked cannabis,
was far more streetwise. “He used to use slang and say ‘bruv’ .” Mahil pauses,
embarrassed. “I was a bit snobbish. It was cool to have a friend like that. He
drove a car without insurance. That, to me, was like, woah!” She called him
her “gangsta” friend, something that w ould come back to haunt her.
In August 2009, when she was 1 8, Mahil received a Facebook friend request
from Gagandip Singh ; he was a few years older , but they had a Facebook friend
in common: Shoker. Mahil didn’t accept requests from strangers, let alone
male strangers, so she asked Shoker about him ; he had met Singh fi ve years
earlier at a Sikh temple. “Ravi said he was great, that he ran a Sikh TV channel
and was Amritdhari – baptised. He said he was a ‘safe’ guy. So I accepted the
request. ” Now Mahil had two male friends she kept secret from her family.
A few weeks later, she met Singh in person for the fi rst time. “Gagan was
ambitious, respectful, progressive,” she says. “He was very active in Sikh youth
work, and I liked that.” Not long after , Singh received shocking news : his father
had been murdered in India after a business dispute. He became withdrawn
and depressed ; over the next year, Mahil
says she became more a counsellor
to him than a friend. But he saw it
diff erently, and told her he loved her.
He became more needy and possessive,
Mahil says. By now, she was living with
fellow students in Brighton. “ A number
of times he turned up unannounced and
said, ‘If I can’t see you, I’ll kill myself.’”
Mahil says it felt like emotional blackmail;
she wasn’t in love, but she valued his
friendship and worried about him.
She immersed herself in student
societies , taking part in the Student Stop
Aids campaign and preparing for a half
marathon to raise money for Anti-Slavery
International. But for the fi rst time , she failed an exam. In August 2010, she
returned to Brighton to resit it; for a few days, she was alone in the house.
The night before her exam, Singh turned up unannounced. He brought her
fl owers, wished her luck, then said one of his headlights had failed : could he
stay the night? Mahil was reluctant, but he persisted. She told him he could
sleep in the lounge, fetched him a blanket and said she had to revise. She says
he began to cry. He wrote a message on his phone and asked her to look at it:
“ I think you should go or I will rape you. ” She dismissed it as a weird joke.
As she worked in her room, he kept coming in. She told him he could sleep
in the bed and took her books and laptop to the lounge. “He followed me.
I was like, ‘For goodness sake, I need to concentrate .’ I went back to my room.”
Exhausted, she fell asleep on her bed. She says the next thing she knew Singh
was on top of her. “He pinned me down with his arms so I couldn’t move my
wrists; his ankles were pinning down my ankles. I saw his kirpan , the daggerbaptised Sikhs wear, which is meant to be a reminder to uphold what’s right
and wrong. I looked at my phone on the desk. He said, ‘Don’t you dare.’”
Mahil says she has never described this night in detail, not even to her
husband. Tears pour down her face. “It was a completely diff erent person,
like Jekyll and Hyde.” She remembers seeing Singh’s kachera , traditional
white undergarments meant to symbolise sexual purity, as he assaulted her.
“ I was trying to struggle all th e time. I felt so weak – like, why can’t I get out of
this? All the self-defence classes I’d done. When he took the kachera off , I had
this burst of energy and managed to fi ght him off .”
She says Singh immediately turned back into the decent young man she
knew. He was apologetic and tearful. “He said, ‘Oh God, I’m so sorry.’ And I said,
‘Get out, I’ll call the police, just get out.’” Before he left, he made a strange
request. “He said, ‘Can I tell a friend about it?’ And I said, ‘Yes, just get out. ’”The following day Mahil was a wreck. She took the exam , but she never told
the police. “I thought it was my fault. I let him stay – no good Sikh girl does
that. What if my family found out, what if the community found out? Who
would believe me anyway? They would say I was leading him on.”
She needn’t have feared being accused of making it up: Singh did tell a friend,
later referred to in court as “Sonny”. Also a baptised Sikh , Sonny was eight
years older than Singh, who saw him as a mentor. After Singh’s death, police
found his message on Sonny’s phone : “Paji [brother] I broke your promise and
tried to rape my best friend I don’t know what to do help.” Sonny told police he
had kept the text, “ in case Gagandip should need reminding to be a good Sikh”.
Meanwhile, Mahil told her friend Shoker about the assault. The next month,
Shoker introduced her to his friend Sonny, who said he’d heard she had been
through a rough time ; it was the same Sonny Singh had confi ded in. “He seemed
a good- natured guy,” she says now. “Respectful, humble, quite wise, a bit older .”
As the weeks passed, Mahil began to put the assault to the back of her mind.
But in November, Shoker told her Sonny had discovered Singh had behaved
inappropriately with other young women. Sonny, he said, wanted to meet
Singh to remind him how important it is for a good Sikh to respect women –
but Singh was no longer answering his phone to either of them. He suggested
Mahil arrange to meet Singh ; then he and Sonny would join them. It wouldn’t
be hard : Singh was bombarding her with texts asking for forgiveness. But
Mahil didn’t want to see him again, nor did she like the idea of tricking him.
In early February 2011, phone records show she texted a friend to say: “Can’t
lie to some1 ... even tho he did the worst thing he cud to me.”
But Shoker pressed her : he said she owed it to the other women Singh had
allegedly harassed , and this made her reconsider. Around this time, she noticed
Shoker’s feelings towards her changing. He told her he loved her; she said she
didn’t feel the same , but saw him as a close friend, which he seemed to accept.
On 18 February, Mahil told her brother, also called Harinder, that a man had
tried to rape one of her friends. Would it be wrong to trick the man into meeting
somebody who would give him a serious talking to? Harinder said he thought
that was fi ne. She was too ashamed to say she was talking about herself.
Mahil asked Harinder if he would meet Sonny, too, and tell her if he seemed
genuine ; she says she worried about the impact on Singh if a confrontation
was handled wrongly. The following day, Harinder met Sonny in Woolwich,
south London. “I was quite religious at the time,” he says now. “There are
hardly any Sikhs where I live, so it was an opportunity to meet somebody new.
We talked mainly about Sikh youth politics, then he said, ‘Gagan is in trouble
and needs help. He keeps calling girls, and harassing them.’ If you decide to
stick to a strict religious path but fall off it, you rely on the people around you
to tell you right from wrong. In that context, a meeting made perfect sense.”
Did Harinder know Singh? “ We had met two or three times, and I underst ood
Mundill knew him. I didn’t know how friendly they were.” Was there any
suggestion of violence from Sonny? “Oh God, no. The question wasn’t even
raised in my mind.” A day later the pair met again, this time with Mahil, and she
agreed to set up a meeting. In her police statement a week later, she said she
invited Singh to her house so she ’d “feel safe”, with her housemates present.
Mahil asked Singh over for 11pm on 25 February, to discuss the assault and
their friendship. Why so late? “We were students; 11pm wasn’t late. Often
we didn’t go to bed till 3am.” She had told her housemates about the assault.‘They said I ate
pie while waiting
to have him
killed. It couldn’t
be further
from the truth’