Britisk påtalemyndighet mener svigermoren ga ordre om æresdrap på svigerdatteren fordi hun hadde innledet et forhold og ville forlate sønnen hennes. Dette var i en sikh-familie.
A grey-haired grandmother sentenced her daughter-in-law to death after finding out she was having an affair, a court was told yesterday.
Surjit Athwal, 27, is believed to have been strangled in indiaBachan Athwal, 70, arranged for 27-year-old Surjit Athwal to “disappear off the surface of the earth”.
Michael Worsley QC, prosecuting, said there had been no sign of Surjit since December 1998 when she went to India believing she would attend weddings with Bachan.
She is believed to have been strangled and her body has never been found.
Bachan and her son, Surjit’s husband Sukdave Athwal, 43, both of Hayes, west London, deny murder and conspiring with others to commit murder.
advertisementMr Worsley told the Old Bailey that Surjit, a Customs officer at Heathrow, was a vivacious young woman whose Western ways had annoyed the family. “Family honour had become at stake,” he said.
Surjit, whose family came from Coventry, told colleagues that when she returned from India she intended to set up home with the married man with whom she was having an affair.
Bachan, a mother of six, was widowed but she was the most senior and dominant member of the Sikh family.
“She was in a matriarchal position with all the authority that goes with it in a tight-knit community,” Mr Worsley told the jury.
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