12:53pm Wednesday 29th February 2012
Three people were locked up today over the brutal killing of a TV executive who was beaten and left to die in a burning car.
Harvinder Shoker was given a life sentence and will serve a minimum of 22 years for murdering Gagandip Singh, 21, in February last year.
He and Darren Peters beat Mr Singh unconscious and bundled him into the boot of a car which was then set on fire. Peters was sentenced to 12 years for Mr Singh’s manslaughter.
Female medical student Mundill Mahil, who lured Mr Singh to the scene of the attack, was handed six years for grievous bodily harm.
It emerged during the trial that Mr Singh tried to rape Mahil six months before he died.
She then confided in Shoker, known as Ravi, about the attempted sex attack, and he recruited Peters to help in the plot against Mr Singh.
Mahil lured Mr Singh to her university house in Brighton, pretending that she wanted to talk to him.
He did not know that Shoker and Peters were lying in wait in the bedroom, where he was viciously beaten.
Once Mr Singh was unconscious, they wrapped him in a duvet and bundled him into the boot of the Mercedes he had been driving.
They drove the car to Blackheath in south east London, where it was set alight with Mr Singh still inside in February last year.
Passing sentence, Judge Paul Worsley said: “This was a tragic case. A promising young man of 21 years was burned to death.”
Speaking to a tearful Mahil, he said: “He died in appalling circumstances. He was lured by you, Mundill, to your student house in Brighton where you intended, as the jury have found, that he suffered really serious harm. You had collected Ravi and Darren from the railway station for that very purpose.”
After the attempted sex attack, Mr Singh had bombarded Mahil with hundreds of text messages and phone calls.
The judge went on: “You, Mundill, had decided that Gagandip Singh should be taught a lesson he would never forget. Exactly six months to the day before his death in the very bedroom where he was to be attacked, he had sexually assaulted you.”
Mahil’s brother Harinder had apparently encouraged her to do something about the assault, because she did not want to go to the police.
Judge Worsley said: “Another brother of yours, Harinder, encouraged you to do something about what had happened to you. Otherwise nothing would have happened to Gagandip Singh. That should long remain on his conscience.”
He said Mahil “showed no pity” when Mr Singh called out her name as he was attacked, and added: “You can be manipulative, vengeful and deceitful.”
Addressing Shoker, he said: “Besotted by Mundill, you were prepared to do whatever she asked and more.
”One witness spoke of your boast that you were prepared to go to prison for 21 years for the sake of Mundill.”
He said the apprentice electrician had gone “far beyond” the planned attack and “intentionally killed Gagandip Singh in horrific circumstances”.
Judge Worsley said he was satisfied that Mr Singh was conscious in the boot of the car when Shoker and Peters tied his hands with a satnav cable.
Scientific evidence suggested he was unconscious when the car was set on fire.
The judge told Peters that he had not cared whether Mr Singh was alive when the car was set on fire, and after the attack had “callously” withdrawn £300 using Mr Singh’s bank card as his payment for going to Brighton that night.
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