The Guardian Weekend | 13 February 2021 The Guardian Weekend | 13 February 2021 27 27have space. Why are there so many women here with severe mental health
problems? They need help. I was trying to fi x things .”
She also had to fi nd a way of coming to terms with the fact that she had
been jailed for her part in a vicious murder. “ I told myself I was guilty of this
because I lied to Gagan. That was my way of coping.”
How did her parents cope? “They were so supportive. They said, ‘We’re
going to get through this together, just look after yourself, make sure you’re
eating.’” She wishes she had been more open with them as a teenager : “Why
did I ever hide anything from them? I’d built this perception that there were
things I couldn’t talk to them about, that was self-perpetuating of the culture
I was in. But my family were never like that. They would have understood.”
Does she feel any responsibility for Singh’s death? “I feel morally culpable,
in terms of, what if I hadn’t lied to him and this had never happened? But
from feeling guilty about lying to somebody to being responsible for his
death – that’s just a massive disconnect.”
Mahil was released on licence in 2014 , after serving half of her six-year
sentence. She already knew a criminal record meant she could never become
a doctor, but she was about to discover how limited her options were. “I can’t
become a nurse, an accountant, a lawyer. I can’t become anything caring
because of the violent record I have. I thought, what am I doing with my life?”
She went back to university and graduated from King’s College London in
philosophy, politics and economics. In 2016, she married Varinder Singh Bola ,a rising Labour star. The Daily Mail ran pictures
of them taken before their wedding, under the
headline : “Honey- trap woman appears every
inch the happy bride as she gazes into her new
husband’s eyes only yards away from where her
former admirer was MURDERED.”
In January 2019, Bola won the race to be mayor
of Redbridge. Singh’s sister Amandip told the Sun
that Mahil ha d been allowed to “ingratiate herself
into polite society... But she doesn’t deserve any
of it. Not once has she ever admitted her guilt or
apologised to us.” Four days later, Bola stood down.
At the time , Mahil was working for an
organisation that supports victims of hate crimes.
But when junior members of staff read about
her conviction (which she had declared to the
charity ), they said they were uncomfortable
working with her. “I’d been there fi ve months
with no problems. I thought, OK, if they don’t feel
comfortable with me, I will resign.”
Does she understand why Singh’s family were
upset at her being mayoress? “ Of course.” Mahil
says there isn’t a day that goes by without her
thinking of him or them. “ I can’t begin to imagine
what it is like to lose your son or brother in such
a way. The way he died...” She trails off.
Amandip Singh says she feels no pity for Mahil.
Last week she told the Guardian: “Mundil says
she is also suff ering. If there were any truth in
this, she would not have taken her pre-wedding
pictures within walking distance of where
Gagandip was murdered. She had been plotting
this attack for months – there were several
meetings between her brother and her gangster
friends. She knew exactly what was going to
happen that evening, and instead continued to
eat her key lime pie with her housemates.”
Mahil now works for Working Chance , a charity
that helps women with criminal convictions fi nd
jobs. She says it has given her a degree of self-
belief. “For so long, people said, ‘ Time is the best
healer, you’ll be fi ne – keep yourself busy and
active.’ But time hasn’t healed. Now, for the fi rst time in a long time, I wasn’t
demonised.” She is also a trustee on three other criminal justice charities.
“I just want to make good out of a bad situation. If I can help anybody else ,
that’s where I’m trying to head.”
But, she says, her workplace is still an exception when it comes to not
judging her. “You don’t feel you can go to the temple, or to a dinner party,
without people looking at you and thinking, ‘Oh, is that that girl, who did that
to that boy? She killed someone, what a bitch.’”
A couple of months after we fi rst talk, she tells us she has written to Shoker
to let him know she is talking to a newspaper. He has now served nearly 10
years of his 22-year sentence. She says he rang her and apologised for ruining
her life. How does she feel about him now? “Angry – but also sorry for him. I
don’t think he intended to kill Gagan.”
Spend any time talking to Mahil and she comes across as a bright , kind
woman. Yet she knows the best she can hope for is to emerge from this
terrible crime as a weak, naive liar. Why is she willing to tell her story now,
rather than quietly getting on with her life? Because, she says, she can just
about live with that version of herself – weak and naive – but not with the
idea that she ruthlessly plotted Singh’s death. “I’ve had death threats and
attacks on my family,” she says. “There are moments when I’m hopeful that
this can’t last for ever. But I still feel like I’m living in prison. It might not have
JULIAN ANDERSON/THE GUARDIAN those four walls, but the psychological prison I’m in is almost worse.”
Mahil with her husband, Varinder Singh Bola, a Labour councillor who
stood down as mayor-elect of Redbridge after media coverage of her past