Briton gets 18 years for racial killing of Indian

Christopher Miller, 25, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 18 years on Tuesday for killing Kunal Mohanty by slashing his throat in an unprovoked attack as he was walking in the city of Glasgow along with his friends.

“There can be no justification for slashing the throat of a man who had done you no harm. To do so because of the colour of a man’s skin is as incomprehensible as it is evil,” Judge John Beckett told Miller.

“Everyone in this country should feel shame for what you did.” Mohanty, 30, from Jalandhar, was in Glasgow to sit his captain’s exams at the city’s Nautical College, where he had begun his studies 10 years earlier. His wife was expecting their first child. He was walking to a restaurant in the Gorbals area of the Scottish city on March 27 when a group, including Miller, approached him and asked him for a cigarette.

Kunal replied he did not smoke. Without warning, Miller slit the seaman’s throat. Mohanty’s friends, who were a few steps in front of him, told the trial that they had initially thought he was being sick, before realising that his neck was pouring with blood.

A doctor who tried to save Mohanty said the 18 cm knife-wound, which severed the carotid artery and jugular vein, was one of the worst injuries he had seen in 29 years of practice. Closed-circuit television footage showed Miller and a friend running through a car park, celebrating as Mohanty lay dying.

The men are seen cuddling, punching their arms in the air and Miller pulling his jumper over his head. An hour later, Miller was again recorded on CCTV throwing sauce at staff in an Asian takeaway restaurant, and shouting racial abuse at them.
Miller’s brother told the court the killer told him he had “done a Paki”. Kunal’s brother Kanishk said on Tuesday: “This is supposed to be a developed country. I fail to understand what kind of developed country it is where citizens of that country can do something like this, to kill someone simply because they are different.”

A prosecution spokeswoman said: “Kunal’s family, wife and friends back home in India have been through a harrowing experience, and we hope the verdict will offer some kind of comfort and allow them to somehow rebuild their lives.”