After 8 yrs in UK jail, NRI murder convict will serve 20 in India
Harpreet Aulakh was sentenced to minimum of 28 yrs in London in Dec 2010 for plotting the murder of his wife after she asked for a divorce.
London: A non-resident Indian (NRI) serving a jail term in a UK jail for killing his wife over eight years ago is to be deported to India to serve the remainder of his murder sentence in Punjab.
Harpreet Aulakh was sentenced to a minimum of 28 years in London in December 2010 for plotting the murder of his wife, Geeta Aulakh, after she asked for a divorce. The 40-year-old will be deported under the India-UK Repatriation of Prisoners Act, the BBC reported today.
"All arrangements are in place. According to the plan, the UK authorities will bring him to Delhi from where a team of Punjab police officers will bring him to Amritsar," IPS Sahota, a top prison official in Punjab, was quoted as saying.
Inspector general of prisons Roop Kumar said Harpreet Aulakh, who is from Punjab, had told UK authorities that he wanted to serve his remaining term in India.
Geeta Aulakh, 28, was brutally attacked with a machete during the attack in Greenford, west London, in November 2009. She worked for local Indian community radio station, Sunrise Radio, and her murder had hit headlines around the world at the time of the attack.
In November 2009, the victim, who was the mother of Harpreet Aulakh's two sons, was hacked to death with a sword, which her husband of 10 years had chosen from a selection of swords at a store days before the murder.
The attack took place when Geeta Aulakh went to pick up her sons after leaving work at the radio station where she worked as a receptionist.
She was found with head injuries and her right hand severed, and died a few hours later in hospital.
Harpreet Aulakh, also known as Sunny, and two others, Sher Singh, 19, and Jaswant Dhillon, 30, were also found guilty of Geeta Aulakh's murder in 2010. Sher Singh, who actually wielded the sword, and Jaswant Dhillon, who acted as the lookout for the group, were sentenced to 22 years behind bars.
During the trial, the court was told that British-born Indian-origin Geeta Aulakh wanted to divorce her husband over his involvement in violent crimes, leading him to plot her murder.