UK Sikh man gets 2-year-jail for attacking elderly neighbours in drunken stupor

IANS

London, November 11

A 41-year-old Sikh man has been sentenced to two years in prison and banned from contacting an elderly couple for 10 years after he attacked them in the West Midlands region of England in a drunken stupor, a media report said.

Gurjap Singh slapped the woman, who has dementia, and told her he was "going to kill her" before he strangled her husband, leaving him struggling to breathe, the Birmingham Mail newspaper reported on Thursday.

He pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm, strangulation, and assault by beating and was ordered to carry out 200 hours unpaid work and pay 100 pounds compensation to each of his victims and an additional cost of 250 pounds.

The Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court was told that Singh suffered from bipolar disorder and was "in a state of mania" when he launched an assault on the woman as she walked towards her home in Goldenhill Road, Fenton.

When she returned home in the evening after visiting her son on February 5, she was crying and told her husband, "he hit me, he tried to kill me".

As she narrated the ordeal to her husband, Singh entered their property through the back door, and told the woman, "I am going to kill you".

"He slapped her with an open hand to her face several times. Her husband tried to intervene and calm the defendant down. Singh pushed him to the chest. He hit him twice to the left side of his head, causing pain," Prosecutor Fiona Cortese told the court.

Cortese said that Singh struck the man on his head and then grabbed his throat, leaving him struggling to breathe.

He also pulled a clump of hair from the woman's head.

The court was told that the couple lived next door to Singh and treated him like a son.

He told the officers after his arrest that he had gulped down a quarter bottle of vodka before the attack and had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

A victim's statement from the elderly man revealed he was "terrified and completely shocked" that they had been assaulted in their own home.

Singh, who has no previous convictions, has been moved to Swan Square, Burslem, following the attack.

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