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Updated:
NRI Amarjit Chohan &
Family Murder Case
Three
British criminals sentenced to life for
NRI millionaire family’s murder
London, July 6, 2005
Jagdeep Channa
Three British career criminals, convicted last
week for the 2003 murder of NRI businessman,
Amarjit Chohan and four of his family members,
were sentenced on Tuesday to life imprisonment
At the Old Bailey Court, by announcing the sentence,
Judge Sir Stephen Mitchell imposed a life sentence
on the two men, telling them this meant they had
‘‘no prospect of release’’.
Third person, Peter Rees, 39, was sentenced to
life for Chohan’s murder. He was also convicted
of assisting an offender, but cleared of the other
four murder charges.
Regan and Horncy were also sentenced to 12 years
on a charge of wrongful imprisonment to be served
concurrently.
What Regan had not understood was the way in
which Indian families work. Chohan’s brother-in-law,
NRI Onkar Verma who lives in New Zealand, immediately
knew something was wrong when told his mother
and sister had simply gone away. He flew to London
and harangued the police into opening their investigation.
Despite a 10-month trial, one of the longest
in Britain, costing £10 million, the gangsters
have not disclosed how their victims were killed.
The bodies were initially buried in a field but
when the police closed in on the area, they were
removed and tossed out at sea. All but the bodies
of the children then washed up and were recovered,
although badly decomposed. It seems unlikely now
that the remains of the children will ever be
found.
Two
men guilty of family murders
NRI millionaire businessman Amarjit Chohan
London, July 1, 2005
Jagdeep Channa
Two men, a drug dealer and his henchman, Kenneth
Regan, 55, and William Horncy, 52, were convicted
at the Old Bailey today of murdering a businessman
Amarjit Chohan and four of his relatives so
Regan could take over Mr Chohan's freight company
and use it as a front for importing drugs.
A jury convicted Regan, of Wilton, near Salisbury,
Wiltshire, and his accomplice, Horncy, after
deliberating for 13 days at the end of a complex
£10m trial that began last November. It
was one of the longest murder trials in British
legal history according to guardian report.
The jury of eight men and four women deliberated
for a total of 61 hours over 13 days before
reaching their unanimous verdicts.
Detectives put the cost of the eight-month
case at 10 million pounds and said the two-year
police investigation had involved over 1,000
officers and stretched from Britain to Belgium,
the United States and India.
A third man, Peter Rees, 39, was convicted
of murdering Amarjit Chohan and assisting an
offender but cleared of the other four murder
charges.
Mr Chohan, his wife, Nancy, their two sons,
Devinder and Ravinder, and Mrs Chohan's mother,
Charanjit Kaur, disappeared in February 2003
and were later murdered, the court heard during
the trial.
NRI, Chohan's body was found floating in the
sea near Bournemouth pier in April that year
and his wife's body was recovered in the same
area in July. Mrs Kaur's body was found in November
2003 in a bay of the Isle of Wight. The bodies
of the boys are still missing.
Regan planned to make people think Mr Chohan,
from Hounslow, west London, had given up his
business and gone abroad voluntarily, prosecutor
Richard Horwell told the jury. The prosecution
said Regan then intended to run the freight
company his way, using it as a front for drug
running.
"Some crimes are beyond belief and, on
any view, these horrific murders fall into that
category," Mr Horwell told the court during
the trial.
The prosecution said Regan lured Belinda Brewin
- a friend of the late television presenter
Paula Yates - into his scheme. Unknown to her,
he used her 50-acre estate at Great Colefield
House, Stoodleigh, Tiverton, Devon, to bury
the Chohan family secretly.
The mass grave was dug up and the bodies dumped
in the Channel when Miss Brewin became suspicious
and contacted police, the court heard.
Regan had been convicted of drug dealing in
1998 and became a police informer to shorten
his sentence, serving four years before being
released in 2002. The trial heard he came up
with the plan to target Mr Chohan because he
was desperate for fresh funds to try and recapture
the lavish lifestyle he had enjoyed before going
to prison.
Regan denied the murders. Paul Mendelle, for
Regan, argued there was "not a scrap of
evidence" and that "Regan would have
had to be desperate beyond belief to slaughter
an entire family for the sake of a business".
Regan fled to Spain and then to Belgium as
police moved in. He was arrested in Ghent in
August 2003 and brought back to England to stand
trial.
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