British judges have ruled that a couple who have been accused of murdering their adopted son in India inorder to gain his life insurance payout cannot be extradited to India for trial because it would breach their human rights.
Despite Britain’s chief magistrate ruling that there was strong evidence to convict Dhir and Raijada and based on a confession from one of the hitmen and payments made to him the pair avoided extradition following a High Court hearing and are free to walk the streets of Britain.
Sitting in London, Lord Justice Dingemans upheld a refusal to extradite the couple on the basis they face the prospect of a sentence of life without parole if convicted of double murder in India.
However, as the murder was allegedly plotted from the couple’s housing association flat in Hanwell, west London, they could be investigated in the UK, the High Court said.
Former baggage handler Dhir was named by Interpol as one of its ‘most wanted’ shortly after Gopal’s murder in February 2017 and was arrested in London.
After Dhir placed an advert in an Indian newspaper looking to adopt, a man approached Gopal’s family in the poor village of Maliya, promising the boy a better life in the UK. As the adoption progressed, Kenya-born Dhir, who moved to Britain as a child, took out life insurance on Gopal and paid two premiums totalling £30,000.
The policy would pay out ten times the value of the annual premium – about £150,000 – in the event of Gopal’s death, with Dhir the sole beneficiary. Dhir and Raijada are then said to have hired a former student who lived with them in London to arrange the murder.
Nitish Mund said he was recruited to kill Gopal after two unsuccessful attempts left Raijada ‘furious’. Gopal and his brother-in-law Harsukhbhai Kardani were ambushed by men on motorbikes on a dirt road as they made their way to sign paperwork.
Gopal was abducted and later found with stab wounds on the side of a road. He died in hospital a few days later. Mr Kardani was stabbed trying to defend his relative and also died in hospital.
Mund was arrested and charged with murder in India where he said he had been recruited by the British couple to kill the boy.
Investigations found Raijada had transferred money to Mund shortly before the killings. Gopal’s insurance policy was not paid out.
