Pharmacist sentenced for vicious stabbings and robberies in Walsall and Wolverhampton
A pharmacist with a student visa robbed and attacked vulnerable elderly victims after spiralling into crime
A qualified pharmacist is facing deportation after stabbing and robbing his landlord and two elderly woman in a string of vicious attacks carried out in a five-day period.
Drug addict Gurkirat Singh, aged 32, who was living in Walsall at the time, was arrested after knifing and robbing the owner of a property in Redhouse Street, Palfrey, on March 11 where £1,500 was stolen after a scuffle. The man had asked Singh to leave after he outstayed his welcome. The following day Singh snatched an 80-year-old woman’s handbag in a nearby street resulting in her tumbling to the ground and injuring her nose.
Three days later he stabbed a 75-year-old woman in the back of her head in Stratton Street, Park Village, in Wolverhampton, after snatching her handbag near Nine Elms Lane. All three victims ended up requiring hospital treatment. The injured landlord needed 12 stitches to his head.
Sentencing him Judge Laura Hobson said: “You have been in this country for less than a year when you committed these offences and you had been living a successful and blameless life in India completing your education and engaging in a career in pharmacy and having a family. It is not quite clear to me how why things went so badly wrong for you after emigrating to this country.
“I have heard mention of a longstanding drug addiction to class A drug. It seems to me you were living a well established life in India so it remains unclear how things spiralled quickly out of control. Whatever the reason these three victims have paid the price and you must be punished for what you have done.”
Singh, an Indian national, arrived here on a student visa, but was not on any course of the time of the crime spree. At a previous hearing he pleaded guilty on a basis to three counts of robbery, two counts of wounding with intent and one count of possession of a bladed weapon in public. He told officers that the landlord had struck him first and in response he had over-reacted.
However, Miss Seamran Sidhu, prosecuting, said his basis was not accepted, but following at a ruling by Judge John Butterfield KC that the basis would not make any difference to the sentence, the Crown Prosecution Service was content to conclude the case.
In their impact statements the victim all spoke of how the attacks had left them with physically and emotionally scarred and of losing their confidence after previously enjoying active, independent lives.
Mitigating, Miss Tamrin Heppel, said Singh was remorseful. “This was a course of continual conduct was over five days - during a deterioration in his drug addiction. I urge the court to impose a sentence reflecting the overall criminality.”
Punjabi speaker Singh, who was assisted in court by an interpreter, was jailed for a total of 10 years and eight months munis time already spent on remand. He must serve at least two-thirds of the term in prison before being released on licence with conditions. He was also made subject to a restraining order for 25 years relating to two of the victims, meaning he must not contact them in any way or go to the Palfrey property.
The judge also ordered the deprivation and destruction of the knives. She said any decision about whether Singh will, be deported will be made by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood.