Sarbjit on her wedding day with her sister-in law Surjit, (right). The family forced the pair to clean and cook for them...
Hello Friends!
For seven utterly terrifying years, I lived with a woman who had planned and executed a cold-blooded murder. She was my mother-in-law — and I feared that at any moment I’d become her next victim.
Why didn't I contact the police? Well, of course I did — though I was far too scared just to walk into a police station.
Instead, I called Crimestoppers and gave them every last chilling detail I knew about the plan to kill my vibrant young sister-in-law while on holiday in India.
I also wrote an anonymous letter to our local police station in Hayes, Middlesex, and posted it. But nothing happened — nothing at all. Indeed, years later, my letter to the police was discovered languishing on a shelf at Hayes Police Station.
Why? After all, when 21-year-old Lucie Blackman (an English girl who worked as a hostess in a Tokyo bar) vanished in 2000, the British Prime Minister himself publicly criticized the Japanese for their failure to trace her. There was no such urgency in my sister-in-law’s case — yet Surjit was no less British than Lucie. She even worked for Her Majesty’s Customs & Excise at Heathrow.
Was her disappearance considered a low priority because she was a Sikh? Did the police think that it was just a family matter? Or did they just mislay my letter?
Whatever the reason for their inaction, my mother-in-law was jubilant. As far as she was concerned, she’d literally got away with murder …
Since as far back as I can remember, I’ve been obedient and respectful of my elders. At my childhood home in Hounslow, West London, I was washing up and doing laundry by the age of six.
By the time I was 19, my parents were keen for me to have an arranged marriage — and they thought they’d found the perfect family.
The Athwals lived in Hayes and there were two sons, one of whom was already married. The other son, Hardave, worked for an electrical company and was seeking a wife.
Our two families met on neutral territory, at an aunt’s house, where we sat on opposite sides of the room, like opposing teams.
Sarbjit and her husband on their wedding day with her mother and father-in-law in the background. The mother controlled all of the men in the house...