‘I watched my mum murder my dad…she deserves to be hanged’ says son of Brit mum who poisoned her husband’s biryani
THE son of a British woman sentenced to death for slitting her husband’s throat while he slept said his mum deserves to be hanged.
Ramandeep Kaur Mann, 38, was found guilty of murdering her husband after her eldest son Arjun – who witnessed the savage slaughter – delivered compelling evidence to a court.
At just nine years old, Arjun saw his dad, businessman Sukhjit Singh, bleed to death while on a month-long holiday in Delhi, India in 2016.
Mann, from Derby, and her lover and accomplice Gurpreet Singh devised an elaborate plan to kill Sukhjit, lacing his biryani curry with sedatives before slitting his throat as he slept in the bed he shared with Mann.
As the sole eyewitness to the horrific crime, Arjun, now 17, testified against his mother at her trial in an act he said “took a lot of courage”.
He described seeing his mother smother his father with a pillow, and her lover Gurpreet hit him in the head with a hammer, before Mann slit his throat.
Arjun told MailOnline: “There are not many children who watch their mother kill their father and then give evidence about it. How do you try and get on with your life after something like this?
“I’ve had to be very brave and I’m proud of what I’ve done because I’ve got justice for my father.
“My brother and me don’t think of this woman as my mother anymore, she’s evil.
“We want nothing to do with her. As far as I’m concerned, she stopped being a mother to us the moment she murdered our father.”
The teenager said of his mother’s death sentence: “I would like to be there when it happens. It doesn’t fill me with fear, in fact, it would give me a lot of satisfaction and relief and I look forward to that day.
“I would like all my family to be there with me. I would like to see with my own eyes that justice for my father has been served.
“She deserves to hang because she did such an evil thing she did.”
He learned of his mother’s court-ordered fate following her trial at Shahjahan District Court in the state of Uttar Pradesh, north India, while he was in the UK.
It filled him with mixed emotions, he said, as he felt “relief and that it was right” but “I wasn’t happy because I’ve still lost my father, which makes me very sad”.
“But I don’t have any sympathy for her because she’s never shown any remorse and has lied this whole time,” Arjun said.
Despite his young age at the time of his dad’s murder, he said he can remember all that transpired in graphic detail as he didn’t eat the biryani laced with sedatives.
He said: “I was fast asleep and then I heard a banging noise.
“I looked up from under the sheet and my mum was on top of my dad smothering him with a pillow.
“Then Gurpreet, who I called ‘Uncle Mithu’, hit him over the head with a hammer. I remember the two of them then had a conversation saying, ‘He’s still alive. We’ve got to finish him off’.
“My mum then took the knife and slit his throat.”
Arjun said he lay frozen, terrified that if he spoke or tried to help his mum that Gurpreet might kill him too.
In the morning, he said he rushed downstairs to tell his grandmother that “something had happened”, but could provide no detail as Mann was in the room.
Police arrived within an hour, but Arjun was only able to whisper what he had witnessed to his grandmother the next day, while his mum spoke with officers in a separate part of the house.
Mann was arrested a short time later – and neither Arjun nor his brother Aaron have spoken to her since.
She remains today in Shahjahanpur District Jail and is appealing her death sentence.
Arjun said: “She’s written us letters, but we don’t even read them. We just tear them up and throw them in the bin.
“Why would we want anything to do with a woman who has taken our father away from us?”
Gurpreet was jailed for life and fined £3,000 but spared the death sentence after confessing to the savage crime.
Both Arjun and Aaron continue to face unimaginable trauma related to their father’s murder.
But they are determined to lead lives that are as normal as possible.
The boys now live with their paternal uncle and aunt in a seven-bedroom home in the Midlands, where Arjun is studying A levels to be an engineer and Aaron, now 13, attends secondary school.
As their legal guardians, the boys’ uncle and aunt Kuldip Singh and Kulwinder Kaur have decided not to release current photographs of Arjun or Aaron as people outside their immediate family circle do not know of the horrors they have experienced.
Kuldip said: “Given what they’ve gone through the boys are doing incredibly well. They work hard at school and are very polite and well balanced.
“They are a credit to their father, and we believe that out of this horrible tragedy, we’ve received two gifts. They are our shining stars.
“But we don’t want Arjun and Aaron to be stigmatised in any way. It’s not that we’re ashamed of what’s happened but we are very protective over them so that they can lead normal, happy lives.”
His wife Kulwinder said: “We raised two sons of our own, who are now in their late 20s, and thought we were free of parenting responsibilities.
“But when my brother was killed, we had to step up for his boys. We feel blessed that they have come into our lives.”
Arjun said his dad “was a really good dad and I miss him a lot”.
“I’ll never forget the wonderful memories I have of him but as sad as it is, me and my brother are lucky to have found a new mum and dad,” he added.