In a first ever international transfer of a prisoner to Punjab under the Repatriation of Prisoners Act signed by India and the UK, UK-based NRI Harpreet Aulakh will be repatriated from London to the Amritsar Central Jail, eight years after he was sentenced to 28 years for killing his wife. A three-member team of the Punjab prison department will take Harpreet's custody from UK officials who will escort him to the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi.
Geeta Aulakh, who was 28 at the time, was killed on November 16, 2009. She was murdered by Harpreet when she sought to end their decade-old marriage. Punjab Minister of Jails Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa said, “In the first week of July, we got a communique from the Ministry of External Affairs that Aulakh wanted to be shifted to Amritsar to serve the remaining term of his 28-year punishment. After completing formalities, the jail department issued a no objection certificate, and now he will be shifted to the Amritsar prison.” Inspector General (IG), Prisons, Roop Kumar said, “Formalities have been completed and Harpreet will land in Delhi on Tuesday from where he will be brought to the central jail in Amritsar.”
A receptionist with Asian radio station Sunrise Radio, Geeta was on her way to pick her sons aged eight and 10, at Greenford, London, when she was attacked by two hired killers- Jaswant Singh Dhillon of Ilford and Sher Singh, a teenager from Southall. She suffered multiple head injuries and died immediately after being brought to the hospital. Her right hand was severed with a machete as she tried to shield herself from Sher Singh's repeated attacks. Harpreet was known to be averse to his own wife and had an apparent infatuation for her sister Anita.
When Geeta left him, he reportedly developed an obsession with the idea of she seeing another man. There were also incidents of him confronting her male colleagues, hacking into her Facebook account, and breaking into her flat to pore over receipts. He was also found to be involved in drug and immigration scams later. From a poorer Sikh family, Harpreet was suspected by police of involvement in a series of violent crimes even before he entered the UK illegally in his early twenties.
Assumed to have come clean from the murder, the then 32 year old's plan gave way when Dhillon approached the police claiming to be a witness. He took them the canal in Slough, Berkshire, where they had dumped the machete and Sher Singh's jacket. A breakthrough only came later when officers discovered the rare, Brazil-made weapon stocked by a shop just half a mile from Aulakh's home in Hounslow, west London.
CCTV footage of the store showed three people buying a machete. Two were tracked down, and the third was Aulakh himself. Sher Singh, who carried out the attack and Dhillon who acted as a lookout, were sentenced to 22 years. During trial, the London Court was told that Geeta wanted to divorce her husband over his involvement in violent crimes, and in turn fell victim to his ways herself.
