{"id":3509,"date":"2008-12-16T13:28:33","date_gmt":"2008-12-16T13:28:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tat.reddaisytrading.co.uk\/index.php\/2008\/12\/16\/honour-killing-victims-daughter-calls-for-justice\/"},"modified":"2016-01-07T11:23:33","modified_gmt":"2016-01-07T11:23:33","slug":"honour-killing-victims-daughter-calls-for-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/2008\/12\/16\/honour-killing-victims-daughter-calls-for-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"Honour-killing victim\u2019s daughter calls for justice"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Family in India bid to re-open Surjit Athwal case<\/h3>\n
\"\"THE daughter of a woman who was murdered in India has demanded her killers be brought to justice.<\/strong><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Twenty-seven-year-old Surjit Athwal died in 1998 during a trip to India.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Last year her husband, Sukhdave Athwal, 43, and mother-in-law, Bachan Athwal, 70, were convicted at the Old Bailey of arranging her murder. <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Despite the convictions Surjit\u2019s killers have so-far evaded justice. <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

But her daughter, 17-year-old student Pavanpreet, has demanded they be brought to justice.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Her family have hired a lawyer to try and persuade the Punjab High Court to order police to re-open the investigation. <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

In an interview with the BBC, Pavanpreet, who was seven when her mother was murdered, said she wanted \u201ccomplete justice\u201d for what happened to her mother.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

During the trial last year the Old Bailey was told Surjit, a Heathrow Customs Officer, vanished during a trip to India weeks after Bachan told family members she had arranged her daughter-in-laws murder. <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

The prosecution alleged Surjit was murdered because she wanted to divorce her abusive husband. <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

The jury were told Bachan made no secret of her disgust with Surjit over her desire to end her marriage. <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Michael Worsley QC, prosecuting, told the court Bachan vowed a divorce would only take place “over my dead body”.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

A month before Surjit disappeared Bachan called a family meeting where she explained how she would take her daughter-in-law to India under the pretext of a family wedding where she would be killed. <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Bachan\u2019s other daughter-in-law, Sarbjit Athwal was at that meeting and told the court her mother-in-law had made it clear she was going to \u2018get rid\u2019 of Surjit.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Bachan was jailed for 20 years, while Sukhdave was sentenced to a minimum of 27 years. <\/div>\n

\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Family in India bid to re-open Surjit Athwal case THE daughter of a woman who was murdered in India has demanded her killers be brought to justice. Twenty-seven-year-old Surjit Athwal died in 1998 during a trip to India. Last year her husband, Sukhdave Athwal, 43, and mother-in-law, Bachan Athwal, 70, were convicted at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}