RedHanded - Sarbjit Kaur Athwal: Life Without Honour | #399

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

When her sister-in-law never returned from a trip to India, Sarbjit Kaur Athwal knew exactly what had happened: her mother-in-law had made no secret of her plan to “get rid of” the outspoken thorn in the family’s side.But Sarbjit also knew what she was up against: a strict code of honour; the threat of shame and total rejection by her community – and the certainty that if she stepped out of line, it would be her turn next.Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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That's audible.com slash wondereseca. Hello history fans, I'm Eris James. I'm Tom Crane. And I'm Chris Skull. And we're the hosts of Oh What A Time, the history podcast which tries to answer the question, was the past as horrific as it seems. Each week we tackle a brand new subject from life in Nelson's Navy to death in ancient

Rome. From maniacal monarchs to Soviet spies to the history of milk. And we ask the questions other history shows are too chicken to. How would you feel about consummating your marriage in front of your in-laws in medieval Britain? No thanks. How would your puny little arms fare as part of the crew on a Viking longboat? And would you be up for a night out to see a sapient pig in Victorian London?

This is Oh What A Time, the podcast that the Times newspaper described as very funny, if less scholarly than its rivals, probably fair. This podcast is guaranteed to make your life better, by reminding you that things in the past were so much worse. That all the time available every Monday and Tuesday on Wondry with two bonus episodes every month on Wondry+. I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah.

And welcome to Road Handed, where we're going to throw a lot of names at you today. And it's going to get real fucking confusing. I wrote the script and I was like, who the fuck am I talking about now? It's really, really confusing. So warning, early doors, because I read the book and I was making notes on it and then I had to go back and like write everybody's name that properly. And I had written S, SB, SD, H and I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, who's married to who and what's going on? So you've been warned, we're going to try our best to keep

it as clear as possible. And maybe, you know, you guys aren't as stupid as I am and you'll be absolutely fine. On the 2nd of November 2005, the police arrived at a home in Hayes, West London. They knocked on the door and it was answered by a woman who immediately began weeping. She had been expecting them. Does Hayes count as London now? It does. woman who immediately began weeping. She had been expecting them. Does Hays count as London now? It does. It is technically middle sex, but it is also technically, apparently, West London. I double-checked.

I mean, I believe you, but I also know that people say that Croydon is South London, which it ain't. Coming in hot and fast. The police stormed into the property that may or may not have been in West London to arrest the other adults in the house, as the children watched on in shock. The woman who would answer the door fell to her knees. The police handcuffed her. As her husband was led out, he shouted to her in Punjabi,

Don't say a word. The police asked her what he'd said and she told them. The crying woman, Sabjit Khor Athwal, was taken to the police station along with her husband Hardev, his brother Sukhdev and their mother, Bachchan. They were all under arrest for the murder of Sukhdev's wife, Surgit, seven years previously. But that day, Surgit was giving the performance of her life. She knew that the police were coming. Because she was the one that had called them. Still, the fear coursing through her body as she sat shaking and crying in the police

car was all too real, even as the officers secretly smiled at her, because Sabjit knew that if her husband or her in-laws even slightly suspected her of being the leak, she was as good as dead. After all, that's what they had been threatening her with for years. After they'd murdered her sister-in-law, Serjeet. Now to understand this incredibly complicated story of honour, shame, abuse, twisted loyalty and immense courage, we need to start with the woman who had called the police. Sabjit Kaur Athwal. Sabjit was raised in an ultra-orthodox Punjabi Sikh family in Hounslow, again in West London.

Her parents had come to the UK from India as newlyweds. But in their home, for all intents and purposes, they may as well still have been in India. The Gurdwara, the Sikh temple, was at the core of their lives. Sabjit's family only socialised with other Punjabi Sikhs. And Sabjit couldn't even speak a word of English when she started school, despite having been born in London. Education wasn't at the top of her family's list of priorities for Sabjit. Instead, she was taught to cook, clean and run the household. But overall, Sabjit remembers her childhood being a nice one.

Sure, her parents were strict and very traditional, but they loved her and she always felt safe. That changed, however, when at the age of ten, Sabjit, being the eldest of the kids, was taken to India by her father. She thought she was there for the summer to meet her extended family. But, much to the ten-year-old's horror, her father left Sabjit there in India in the care of his family in a tiny village in the Punjab, which is in the north of India. Sabjit was heartbroken and absolutely terrified. But, as we'll go on to see, she's very good at keeping her head down, just getting on

with it. And so, Saabjit waited patiently for her dad to come back and get her. It would be another two years before he did. It is very harrowing. Now a lot of the information for this story comes from the book that Saabjit herself has written. It's called Shamed. I would definitely recommend it. It wasn't that easy to get hold of but I think you can get it used on Amazon which is how I did.

And yeah that time, those two years that she's there, like she didn't know these people. Yes, it might have been her grandmother, her aunts, her cousins but she had never ever met them before and she is just abandoned there for two years and she has no idea if he's actually coming back. He speaks to her on the phone and is like, yeah, yeah, I'll come back and get you. But there's no indication of when that's going to happen. So what's going on here? Well, essentially, Sabjit's parents wanted to ensure that their daughter had a solid

connection with her culture and heritage. They wanted her to spend time in India learning from her grandmother, aunts and cousins how to be a good Sikh woman, and crucially a good Sikh wife, at the age of 10 years old, without her consent. But okay. And look, this is by no means common. I'm not saying this is like, oh well, you know, everybody does it. No, no, no.

Sabjeet has herself said that her parents were very orthodox and they genuinely didn't think what they were doing was wrong or harmful in any way. As far as they were concerned, Sabjeet was with family. She'd be fine. But it was, of course, a deeply traumatic experience for the 10-year-old, and absolutely one that I think you can clearly see goes on to shape her. How could it not? Yeah, absolutely in terms of her, like, I don't want to speak negatively of Sabjit, but I'm sure she's very candid in the book about how these things impacted her and how

she grows and evolves as a person. Absolutely her people pleasing. And you'll see that through this and how, while she shows immense courage during this story, how she gets to the point where she is stuck with this group of crazy people and she is able to excuse away a lot of the behaviour that's going on around her is because she clearly doesn't want to rock the boat. Because if you've been abandoned for two years by your own family, you are of course going to have those feelings of, well if I say something wrong, God knows what's going to happen to me. And you just want to be safe. Totally. And like I don't think there's any shame in it. I think if anybody, I don't think

there's a person on the face of the planet who that experience wouldn't have like indelibly changed forever. And yeah, a lot of this story is obviously focusing on the Punjabi Sikh community. Again, obviously very orthodox parts of that community. But yes, absolutely the kind of running of sort of parallel cultures, parallel communities within the UK, where this family, you know, they weren't even speaking English at home, even though their kids were going to grow up there. And Sabjit herself says the resentment she felt when she went to school and couldn't speak English. And she says, I was never very

academically gifted, but I have to wonder how much of that was due to the fact that I started school and I couldn't speak English. Like, that is going to set you back for sure. So yeah, it's a lot going on. I think like I obviously I don't have loads of experience with this particular thing like like language at home and language at school being different is not something that I can relate to at all. But I was watching something the other day of not Punjabi Sikh, but someone who had moved here and had a migrant family and similar experience. They were like, I was doing phonics before school in year 11. And I was like, what? For international listeners, you start year 11 when you are 15 and this kid was doing

phonics at book, like mad. Yeah, it's incredibly difficult. I can speak to this, like my family, we moved from India here when I was six years old, but my parents knew we were going to come here because dad had already been working out here. He knew he was going to bring mum and me over at some point. So he had put me into a school where it was mandatory to speak English so that I would get that experience. And while I could understand English, obviously, when we came here, I did not feel confident to speak it. It's like saying, you know, I can speak a bit of Spanish

or whatever, I can speak a bit of French. But if you go to that country, you do have that fear of saying it because you feel like they're going to know, they're going to know I'm an imposter, I'm going to sound stupid, I'm going to say something wrong. Now imagine you're a child and the fear that that gives you, it absolutely can become a real hurdle to your growth. They 100% thought I had special needs for like a good year when I moved to this country just because I wouldn't speak because I was like, I'm fucking scared to speak. And then it's scary. Yeah. And then they were like, oh no, wait, she, she can read and she can write, but she just won't speak. And so yeah, it's a really difficult thing.

And it also massively impacts you in terms of like, you know, building those connections with other kids, all those kinds of things. So yeah, Sabjit has a really tough start to this whole situation. And this incident in particular, where she's dragged India against her will for this sort of weird like bootcamp situation does not help her at all. So she is eventually brought back to the UK when she's 12 years old. And when this happens, I think it's a little bit like Stockholm syndrome, right? It's like she's really angry at her parents, but then they're the

ones who bring her back. So she's overjoyed. And other than like one outburst that she describes in the book where she screams at her parents, how could you have left me there? The incident was quickly put to bed. I mean, you're just so desperate they're not gonna do it again. They're not gonna try and rock any boat to you.

And that's what I mean about that reinforcement of, don't question the situation, keep your head down, get on with things. And also, you know, he takes her when she's 10, she comes back when she's 12. At that sort of stage in your development, you haven't figured out that your parents are flawed yet. So she obviously is just like, okay, well, there must be some greater reason because

I don't feel like you figure that out that young. No. And then maybe there are some cultures where you just, you don't, like, I don't know. Anyway, once she was back in the UK, Sobjit went back to school and she did all right in her GCSEs, but wasn't desperately keen to go on into higher education. Again, for international listeners, higher education is 16 to 18 and then further education is university. And so, at the age of 17, Sabjit's father explained to her that if she wasn't going to study anymore,

then it was time for her to get married. One day soon after this conversation, her father showed Subjit a picture of a man and told her, this is your future husband. Subjit was horrified and despite her upbringing and her knowledge that one day exactly this would happen, she told her parents no. And potentially surprisingly, I'm surprised, they accepted her refusal. Yeah, because despite the way in which the story has started, Sabjit's parents aren't the baddies in this.

I think they are stuck in a culture of a rural village in the Punjab and they come to the UK and they don't integrate, they don't assimilate, they live in their sort of siloed community and I think they genuinely believe what they're doing is right. That's what they're doing. And in the context of like, Sabjit's life, things don't pan out great for her because of the decisions that they make. And in the context of her coming to a different country where she should have the freedoms that we all enjoy, those things don't pan out great for her. But what is worth mentioning at this point,

the fact that they accept the refusal is that in the South Asian community, arranged marriages are not that unusual. Back in India, most marriages are still probably to this day arranged. In the early hours of December 4th, 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan. This assailant pulls out a weapon and starts firing at him we're talking about the CEO of the biggest private health insurance corporation in the world.

And the suspect he has been identified as Luigi Nicholas Mangione became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history was targeted premeditated it meant to sow terror. I'm Jesse Weber host of Luigi produced by law and crime and twist this is more than a true crime investigation we explore a uniquely American moment that could change the country forever. The people to a true issue.

Finally maybe this would lead rich and powerful people to acknowledge the barbaric nature of our health care system. Listen to Law and Crime's Luigi exclusively on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Spotify or Apple podcasts. In the early hours of December 4th, 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan. This assailant starts firing at him. And the suspect. 4th 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan. This assailant starts firing at him and the suspect he has been identified as Luigi Nicholas

Mangione became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history. I was meant to sow terror. He's awoking the people to a true issue. Listen to Law and Crime's Luigi exclusively on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Spotify or Apple podcasts. Now this is of course quickly changing, especially in urban areas. I think especially as women are getting more educated, I don't know, maybe people who are still currently living in India can speak to this, but different states are going to

be different. The more urbanized it is, this is definitely on the decline. But the idea of love and romance being the key reasons to marry is itself a relatively new phenomenon in most of the world, to be honest. Typically arranged marriages in Asia, as they were once here in the UK a hundred years ago or so, were more about the families, uniting two families and pairing people together by the belief that they were a good match because they had good prospects and a good family name. There is however also the problem

of forced marriages, which are different. In arranged marriages people do tend to have a choice. My parents did in fact have an arranged marriage about 37 years ago, but they both said no, according to my understanding, to a lot of prior suggested matches for both of them before they got paired up with each other. And look, I'm not here to sing the praises of arranged marriages per se. For some people, they work out amazingly, but the difference between forced and arranged can be a bit of a gray area as well, because you'll always hear people say they're completely different things.

And yes, I acknowledge that they're different. I don't know how far we can go to say that they're completely different because in arranged marriages, coercion and emotional blackmail is absolutely used. And we'll see that in this story. Like yes, they accept subjects first refusal. How long is that going to stick? There is going to get to a point where they are going to start using coercive and emotionally blackmailing tactics in order to get what they want.

Again, that's sort of so embedded in the culture that they won't even feel like what they're doing is wrong because the parents will feel like, but I'm doing this for your own good, so you should just get on board with the program. Like it's a very skewed mentality. I'm on that is going to be difficult for people to like wrap their heads around. But yeah, I do think it is a bit of gray area. But if we're talking about forced marriages in particular, there can of course be like

threats of murder and taken to that extreme. But I would say emotionally blackmailing somebody or coercing them into it just because you're not threatening to murder them, it's not giving them the fair option to actually consent. Yeah, forging a star chart. Yeah. Oh, yes. Now also, I do want to challenge the idea that I often see thrown around, particularly by well-meaning people in the West that well-arranged marriages succeed at a much higher rate than love marriages. So, you know, they're onto something. I don't personally want to do it, but they're onto something. I always see this.

Hey, man, the other option isn't going super well for me. No, and look, that's why I'm saying, look, it is, love and marriage is hard full stop, and that's why I think, that's why some arranged marriages work, and that's why some arranged marriages are a total catastrophe, and that's why some love marriages work and some of them are a total catastrophe. And I think that is the one benefit of arranged marriages. In India, none of my cousins are like, oh, isn't dating shit? I can't meet anybody because they're like, you want to marry this guy? No, you want to marry this guy?

No, you want to marry this guy? I'm running out of patience. You want to marry him? Done. You know, it's like, it's everything's a trade off, right? And I think the reason I challenge that when people say, oh, well, they succeeded a much higher rate than like normal marriages here, I'm like, doesn't exactly tell the whole picture when you're just looking at the numbers of like, quote unquote, failed marriages, because

in countries where arranged marriages are typically practiced divorce, up until at least very recently was massively stigmatized and often women didn't have financial security so where are they going to go? Like I'm just going to divorce you and then go live on the fucking street because my parents will be so humiliated they're not going to take me back. So I think it's not telling you the full picture. No and I think it's a really, really good example of why statistics aren't actually... Yeah, they can tell you whatever you want them to tell you. Yes, exactly. Like there's always going to be a dark figure. And if you're not factoring

that into your argument, then you're not making a particularly logically sound one. No. So yes, people staying together under those circumstances isn't necessarily a sign of quote unquote success. But then again, you know, look, saying that most people in my family have had arranged marriages and are perfectly happy. Some of them have had love marriages and are perfectly happy. There are also people in my family who've had divorces on both of those outcomes. So it's just, it's not that simple. So while forced marriages and any in which people are pushed against their will into

a relationship are absolutely diabolical and absolutely rife for exploitation, particularly for the women, arranged marriages can probably be just as successful as love marriages depending on the situation and that's as far as I'm willing to go with her. And so, just because Subject had said no once, her father was not going to give up just like that. Over the next couple of years, he would try again and again, but Subject was firm each time she was shown a grainy passport-style picture of a man that she'd never met halfway across the world, she would say, no, he is not for me. Cindy V's got a bit about arranged versus forced. She's like, you have forced marriage, like you marry him, he marries you, the end. Arranged marriages, everyone goes for lunch

first and then he marries you and you marry him. Yeah, I think she's right. There's not that bigger distinction in the end for some people involved in this. No, it just popped into my head. Yeah. Anyway, not the case. This time, eventually, Sabjit's father agreed that maybe where he'd been going wrong with trying to match Sabjit up with a man from India, because she had been born in the UK after all, perhaps it was the fact they were still living in India that was actually the problem. And Sabjit's father decided maybe his daughter would be more likely to say yes to another British Punjabi rather than one who still lived in India.

And so, one day soon after her 19th birthday, Sabjit and her family went to Hays to meet the Atwal's. They were a very well-respected family in the British Sikh community, and the matriarch, Bachchan, was the big dog down at the local gurdwara. At this meeting, Sabjit was introduced to the family's second son, Hardev. They didn't speak, but she thought it seemed okay, normal enough. Sabjet was a bit concerned, however, by the look of the eldest son's wife. She was a small, pretty woman, but she seemed sad. Sabjet couldn't quite shake the feeling that there was something majorly wrong with this

family. But when she tried to raise this with her parents that evening, they totally lost it. Her dad had had enough. Sabjeet had rejected every man he had suggested. And now she didn't want the Athwells. Mohinder couldn't stand it. From his perspective, if Sabjeet rejected Hardev, it would be hideously shameful for the Athwells.

His daughter would be saying, publicly, that she didn't think Hardev was good enough for her. It would be unbearable. And the prominent, very well respected Athwals would never forgive his family for humiliating them like that. If Sabjit said no to this wedding, it would also be shaming Mohinder himself, because it would tell the community loud and clear that he had raised a daughter who didn't trust him to make good choices for her, and one who would happily defy him publicly.

Didn't something not with the arranged marriage angle, but didn't something quite similar happen in Sweet Bobby? Kieran's dad doesn't really leap to her defense and he says, I think not in the podcast, I think in the documentary, he was like, well, what could I do? Yeah, I think again, it's very telling. If you haven't listened to Sweet Bobby,

definitely go listen to it. Again, it's speaking from the point of view of a Punjabi Sikh family in Britain. And with that, don't want to spoil it all, but yeah, basically at the end of that story, her father is like, don't want to spoil it all, but yeah, basically at the end of that story, her father is like, don't want to get involved, but it's because who this catfisher is and the connection to the family. And he's like, it will bring too much shame on everybody.

And obviously there is a huge sexual side to it that definitely gets buried. So yeah, I think the key thing to know about Asian communities in particular is that they are very shame-orientated. It is very much about honor, it's very much about shame, and that's the crux of everything, everything that you do either bring shame on your family or brings honor to your family. And I think the way that I had to sit down

and think about this, it really did make sense because what is the beef for Mahinda here? It's not just that he wants to see his daughter married because that's another part of it, right? You don't want to have a daughter or even a son because it would be a mistake to say that men aren't affected by it because they're the ones also getting forced into this marriage as well. The reason that women are particularly affected is, as we'll go on to find out in this story,

the women typically tend to move into the man's house. So he is at least around his family, whereas she is a fish out of water. But the problem here for Mahinda is if she says no, because you don't want a daughter that goes too long without being married, because then people are going to start asking questions of what she's doing, what she's up to, blah, blah, blah. You want her honest. If she says no, it makes him look like his daughter doesn't trust him.

That's the thing is you have a daughter that submits or a son that submits, a child that submits to you and your will with who they're going to marry. It's telling everybody, yes, that child looks at you and thinks, yes, you are competent and I trust you to make good decisions for me. And that's, that's a big part of this. And also the shame, he doesn't want to humiliate the athe-Walls because it will be really, really bad for his family. He tells her, you need to make the right choice here and say yes to Harder. And Sibjot had resisted in the past, but she knew this topic was never going to go away. She'd have to marry someone sooner or later.

And she really did not want to embarrass her father. And what would the community think? And this collective pressure to do the right thing, to sacrifice your own potential happiness for the sake of your family and your community, is a running theme in this story. Sabjit explains it really well in her book Shamed when she says, to be a part of the Sikh community is to be a part of one big family. And the key tenants that ruled my life was every action I take will either shame or honor my family. Or 500,000 or so of them in the UK. Which is a lot of pressure.

So Sabjit agreed to the wedding. And while she had initially felt pressured into the marriage, as the wedding day drew nearer, she did start to get a bit excited. Hard ever found out where she worked and had shown up one day out of the blue. They started secretly meeting up and getting to know each other. And Sabjit thought that he seemed like a nice guy. And that might sound strange, but they were engaged, and in this particular community,

until they were actually married, their families wouldn't have liked the fact that they were spending time together alone. The wedding day finally rolled around. The subject was a ball of nerves, and for her, it was also a sad day. In northern Indian cultures, in particular, when a daughter marries a man, she becomes a part of that family. She's expected to leave her own family behind, demote them in some senses in her mind and prioritize above all else her new husband and his parents. And that

is Sam. Yeah, it's like a big part of you watch Bollywood movies, anything like that, which are typically, you know, they are focused on northern Indian culture. That's a big part of it. Definitely, there's a lot of like tears when you wave the door to goodbye because she's leaving your family. She is now more that family than she is yours. It's not really the same in my culture like in South Indians. So I don't like necessarily have that much experience with this. But yeah, it's definitely a breaking away of it.

And Sabjit talks about that in her book as well. She's like, she's so young when this is all happening that she's like, I'm not ready. One of the reasons she also keeps saying no to these men is because she's not ready to leave her parents, not ready to leave that house, not ready to leave her siblings. Because she knows the minute she says yes, she's going to go live in a totally different house, not just with her new husband, with his entire family. So yeah, it's a lot of pressure. And just to hammer home this mentality, after the wedding, Butch and Cor, Hardead's mum, hugged Sarpjit hard and told her, I'm your mum now.

And that might sound like a nice thing. Maybe not how I said it. How about, I'm your mum now. There you go. That might sound like a nice thing. Your mother-in-law telling you maybe to see her as your own mother. But not with Butch and Corr as well. Because unfortunately, there is truth to the stereotypically abusive relationship between

daughter-in-laws and mother-in-laws that often becomes the plotline of many an Indian soap opera. The mistreatment of women in their new marital homes is sadly all too common, particularly because they often move into multi-generational homes, where the man's parents and often other members of the family also live. The woman can in many cases, again we're talking typically this is what's happening in rural parts of India, where the woman maybe doesn't have an education, she can't escape this situation where it's hyper-traditional, the woman might end up becoming a domestic

servant to the whole family. What is shocking about this story to me is that this was happening in ways. And there's a picture from the wedding day itself in which you can see Bachchan and her husband Giyan blessing H Hardev and Subjit by placing their hands on their heads, which I learned in Thailand. No, no, no. You do not touch Thai people on the head. Not that I did. It's just something that came up on my FYP and I was like, okay, good to know. Also pointing at something with your foot, very rude. Feet gross, head no touchy when it comes to Thai people.

Feet definitely gross also in India. There was a funny article I saw where it was, you know, in Wicked, that scene where the man, what's his name? I don't know. Jeff Goldblum? No, the love interest for Ariana Grande. When he jumps up on the table in the library and he's like running over books and like kicking them and like stepping on them.

That went down like a sack of shit in India. Really? You do not put your feet on books. Interesting. Because books are the source of knowledge. They represent education. They represent knowledge. They represent, you know, value and your feet are dirty.

You never put your foot on a book. And if you do put your foot on a book, you touch it and you like kiss your fingers, like, or you kiss your fingers and then you kiss the book like as an apology. Like you do not do that. Again, obviously, that is deeply rooted in the culture. It is seen as highly taboo to do that. So apparently film goers were like, so yeah, I thought it was quite interesting. Anyway. While Guien has one hand on top of each of the happy couple's heads, Batchin is very

clearly only blessing her son. Oh dev. She's not doing the mother-in-law stereotype any favours. Nah, nah. Not at all. She's leading in hard. And while of course it is a photo, it is just a snapshot of one particular moment from the day, but I just don't think that her hand placement was an accident. Nah. In religions and cultures like this one, where symbolism, honour, shame and public optics

are crucial, Bakhtien would have known exactly what she was doing and as we will go on to see, she always does. What that picture shows is her saying loud and clear, to all them they're gathered, my son comes first." Yeah. And for all her like, I'm your mother now. She doesn't actually see Sabjit as a daughter. So after the wedding and the tearful goodbye to her family, Sabjit moved into Ninety Willow Tree Lane in Hayes. And she was ready to be a good wife, a good daughter-in-law, and in time a good mother. She'd been taught how.

And she knew that the better a job she did of these things, the more her new family was sure to love her, and the more honour and pride she'd give her own parents. And as expected, Sarpjeet, along with her sister-in-law, Surgit, Hardev's brother, Sukhdev's wife, were given all of the domestic duties. They had to cook, clean and serve. This was seen as woman's work. But interestingly, Bachchan doesn't get involved with any of this. But again, this wasn't a shock to Sarpjeit. She was well prepared for her role in life. But she did think it was weird that when Sukhdev sisters came to visit, that she, Sabjit and

Surgit were told to sit on the floor while everyone else sat at the table. Again, Sabjit shrugged it off though. Every family has its own culture and she figured she'd just have to get used to it. And I think this also clearly shows that Butchans not just like doing it because they're women, because she treats her daughters perfectly well. They're at the table, they don't lift a finger when they come home. It's her daughter in-laws. They're not family, not really." And there was no clearer example of that than Surgit, Sukhdev's wife. Any time that Surgit

and Sabjit were alone, Surgit would endlessly complain about the Athwal's. And she had a particular hatred for their shared mother-in-law, Bakshin. And that actually shocked Subjit. She couldn't believe that her sister-in-law would speak so badly about their new family, let alone out loud. So who was Surjitet and why was she having such a different reaction to what was going on in the Athwell house? Well, Surget was the same age as Sarpjit. She was 19 as well, but she had married Sukhdev when she was just 16 years old. She had actually been raised interestingly in a much more relaxed household in Coventry. They were, of course, still Punjabi and Sikh.

But Surgit had enjoyed more freedoms growing up. She'd been allowed to have friends from other backgrounds at school. She'd gone to sleepovers, gone on holidays. And she'd not done an enforced two-year become-a-woman boot camp in India. Surgit had married Sukhdev at such a young age because it was her grandmother's dying wish to see her granddaughter married and settled down at sixteen. So the family of six are all living together in this house in Hayes and while Bacchyn is a pain in the arse and incredibly domineering over her sons

and her daughters-in-law, she holds her tongue when her husband, Giyan's around. Who, by the way, by all accounts, was a kind, warm and gentle man. So when tragedy struck and Giyan died following a severe asthma attack. The situation in that house in Hayes flipped totally. Bachchan called a family meeting one night, soon after he died, and announced that she was now the head of the household. The subject was shocked. Traditionally the eldest son would have taken over, but her brother-in-law Sukhdev didn't say a word. And this dynamic of Butchon taking total control and her sons saying nothing is obvious throughout

this case. As Sabjit put it in her book, Butchon would tell her sons to jump, they would ask how high and then make their wives jump for them. But even the submissive Sabjit started to get angry with all of Butchans interference. For example, on her and Hardef's first wedding anniversary, Butchan invited herself out to dinner with them. But despite all the romantic interference, both Surgit and Sabjit got pregnant and had their first babies in 1991. Inspired by the hit, wonder-y podcast Against the Odds comes the gripping guidebook, How

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But their mother-in-law would soon start her meddling ways in the pregnancy department too. She even stopped her daughter-in-law's breastfeeding their own babies so that she could feed them. Please tell me not. With her breast. Yeah. No. Oh, thank God.

She's just like, you don't need to breastfeed babies. We can just bottle feed them. But she just does it because she's like, you know, you two get back in the kitchen. You've got cooking, cleaning, sweeping to do. I'll take care of the babies. And it gets worse. Barton made those children call her mummy. Yeah.

This is what I mean. The book is so confusing with all the names, but then it gets even more confusing when the kids are calling Botchan mummy and they're like, where's mummy? And I'm like, mummy's there, you're talking to mummy. Oh no, they're talking about their grandmother. Because they're so manipulated by this woman. And the thing about Botchan called Athwalis, if you see pictures of her and she plays up to this, absolutely, as we'll see, she's just like this little old woman and that's kind of how she holds herself. But actually she's pretty fucking

tall and incredibly domineering and the force of personality that she has. But she can turn it on and off. She's like such a comedian in how she presents herself and yeah, classic abuser, I guess. And more classics to come, Butcham would regularly tell anybody who had listened that her daughter in-laws were absolutely terrible mothers. And soon, Surget started to rebel. She got a job at Heathrow and started to go out more with her colleagues. At first she would still leave the house in her Indian get-up, some sort of salwar, so

long top and trousers, with a dupatta or scarf to uphold all of your modestiness. But soon, Surgit started to buy her own clothes and she'd get changed in the toilets before her shift. And as her confidence grew, she started coming home from post-work drinks, still in her pencil skirt and tight-fitting blouse. Batchan was horrified. What would the community think? Yeah, and again, it might sound, so many of the things that are happening might sound so minor from like a Western perspective. And I get it, but this is scandalous as far as Butchner is concerned.

And I feel like it's such a, I know it's a different religion, but such a at home with the Kumars kind of plot line of like the teenage girl like stuffing her hijab in the hedge on the way to school. Do you know what I mean? No, it's so true. It's like there was that horrible TV show that they made, not for any reasons because it wasn't politically correct, it just wasn't very funny, Citizen Khan. And in that, the daughter, yeah, she does the same thing. She's like at home, she's all like good hijabi girl, and then she goes outside, she's like in the tiniest miniskirt and rebelling hard. And it's like, if you've grown up as any part of this community, you will know this incredibly common. I actually didn't really

grow up in this community. So like, I can't really speak to this this much. Like my parents didn't really care that much what I was wearing outside of like what your parents may have worried about you wearing. You know, it wasn't like there was that many limitations on it. But this is such a typical story in this community. But the fact that Surgit is just getting sick and tired of it. And because of this exposure to the outside world, because you might be wondering, well, why did they send her out to work? They want the money.

Bachchan wants the money. Like both of her sons like don't earn very good money. And so they know that Surgit is able to get a job and she gets a good job. She's working in like customs and excise at Heathrow and she gets on with people. She grew up in a pretty relaxed house and so she is able to socialize very well. She's very different to Sabjit who is kind of like a bit of a church mouse sort of thing. And she's able to socialize. She's going for after work training.

She's like, this is what my life could be. And yeah, she actually has a full blown affair with a man at work because she is just like, so sick and tired of her life in this house. And you can tell she just starts to push it further and further and further. And she just gives zero fucks by this point. So yeah, Surgit was very much done playing by Butchans rules and begged her husband Sukhdev to move out so they could find somewhere of their own away from his mother. But there was literally no way that Sukhdev was about to do that. And that was not least because he basically had no money.

He needed them to be living in the family home. He had a job as a coach driver but Surgett was definitely the breadwinner. She'd even recently been promoted. But it didn't look like Surgett was going to let this one go, and after she kicked up enough of a fuss, Butchin agreed that Sukhdev and Surgett would be allowed to buy the house next door to 90 Willow Tree Lane, when it just so happened to come up for sale. That's literally as far as she's willing to let her son go. But the fights continued and Sabjit heard it all through those paper thin walls.

And one day after a particularly heated argument about Surgit staying out late to work Sukhdev and Bakhtin together beat her. Sarbjit heard it all and was really conflicted. Obviously what was happening was completely awful, but she just wished that Sarbjit would follow the rules. But Sarbjit wasn't about to do that. Instead in 1998 after 10 years of marriage she told the family that she wanted a divorce. She'd had enough of the control and the abuse she was done with the Atwals and she wanted out.

As you can imagine Bachchan went absolutely fucking mental. How could Surgit even imagine doing something like this? If Serjit left, then the family would be humiliated. Her son would lose the house because Serjit earned way more than him, and they needed her paycheck for the mortgage, and she, Bachchan, would lose control and access to her grandchildren. Everyone in the house was on eggshells. Butch and ranted and raved for a while, even phoning Serge's family to rip them a new one, telling her brother she'll have this divorce over my dead body.

Serge's family were terrified. You fucking would be. Like, your daughter is living with this woman and they live in Coventry. They're not in London, so they're so far away. But, Surgit told them, don't worry, it's all in hand. And after a week or so, it looked like it might actually all truly be fine. Because Bachchan, out of the blue, told Surgit that she could have her divorce. Bachchan even told her that she'd tell her son Sukhdev not to contest anything. Surgit could take her kids and they'd split the house. Her mother-in-law just asked Surgit for one favour in exchange.

No! Yeah. And that favour was that Surgit would accompany Butchin to India. There were two family weddings that Butchon needed to attend and she told Surgit that it would mean the world to her if she joined her and let her at least pretend that they were one big happy family before the divorce. Butchon even sweetened the deal, telling Surgit I'll pay for everything, including a shopping spree in Delhi. You can get whatever you want. Then

you can come home and get on with your life as a single woman." Surgit could hardly believe her. So she quickly agreed. But a couple of days after this conversation, Bachchan invited Sukhdev, Hardev and Surgit over for tea and told them, I can't carry on like this with Surgit. She's destroying our family's honor. I've spoken to a contact in India. They've said just to bring her here and we'll take care of it. And that's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to get rid of Surgit once and for all. to do. I'm going to get rid of Surgit once and for all. Yeah. And we have this information, we have like these specific words that she's saying

because you know, people listening might be like, well, how do you know she said that? It's because she's saying this in front of Surgit and Surgit put it in her book, obviously. So it's just such a mind boggling level of confidence, right? It's one thing to say it in front of your sons, although one of your sons is married to this woman and she's the mother of his children, but she's also saying this in front of Sajid. That's how sure she is that she's in control of this entire family. Sajid was reeling.

Was this mad old woman really suggesting what she thought she was? Were they really going to she thought she was? Were they really going to kill Surgit? Surely Surgit's husband would never allow that, even if they were splitting up. As Saru said, she was quite literally the mother of his children. But Sukhdev, as usual, just sat there and didn't say a single word. Apparently, Hardev was the only one who did say something. And he was like, this is crazy.

But he's quickly silenced by his mother. And the next few weeks after this meeting passed in a state of absolute panic for Sabjit. She could not believe that any of this was real. But every time she brought it up with Hardev, hoping that he would maybe roll his eyes and say that his mum was just chatting shit and blowing off steam, something, anything, but he didn't. He just tells Sabjit that it was none of their business and that mum had made her decision. And so, the 4th of December 1998, the day of the holiday came and

Sabjet watched on in horror. A surrogate dragged her suitcase outside and hugged her goodbye. Every fibre of Sabjet's body wanted to scream and tell her sister-in-law to stop, to not go. But she didn't say anything. She couldn't. She was terrified for herself and her own children. And that's because, right before she left, Butchin had said to Sgt. Make sure you keep this in the family. If you say anything to anyone, we'll know it was you and you know what we can do." But after the car left for the airport, Sargeet realised that she couldn't stay silent. She and her sister-in-law hadn't always seen eye to eye.

But Sargeet was going mad. What would happen if they really did kill Sargeant in India? She would leave behind, at this point, three whole children. So despite her terror, Sargeant got in her car and drove to a payphone. In her book she writes about how she sat in the car for what felt like an eternity, waiting, thinking, she was sure someone would see her and report back to the Athwells. Even a pass-it comment of something like, oh I saw your wife in the phone box on whatever road the other day, she looked a bit stressed, everything all right. That

would be enough. It would be game over for Subject herself. But eventually, thinking of Serge'sit's children, Sabjit dragged herself out of the car. She couldn't bring herself to call 999 though. What if they figured out who she was? And I do think at the best of times calling 999 feels like an immense leap. It feels like a huge, huge thing to do. And also, at this point, she isn't even sure if it's real. So the idea of calling the police and telling them something that

could all just be a family joke, she can't do it. So she did what she thought was the next best thing. Subject called a number that she had secretly memorised after that bizarre tea party that her mother-in-law had thrown. Crime stoppers. Sabjit told them everything she had heard. She gave them all of their names and even told them the flight details. The person on the line thanked Sabjit for informing them of the matter and she breathed a sigh of relief.

Surely the authorities would go and put a stop to all this madness. But after a few days, and with no news, Subject started to worry again. So this time, despite her utter terror, she wrote a letter, detailing everything except her own name name and posted it to her local police station. She was ready to do anything to make the nightmares that were plaguing her stop but all the while she was worried what if she was wrong about the whole thing what if it was just some weird joke and then the police turned up then everyone would know it was her that had got

them in the first place. And on top of that, she would have ratted out her own family. Bad news. It really is like you've got a cool butch and splough on this, right? Like if you call the police and they come around to ask questions, and it was all just a joke and Serge it turns up with a suitcase full of like shopping from Delhi like two weeks later, everyone's going to know that because she wasn't murdered and there was no plot, there's no other way the police could have found out other than Surgia having told them. Exactly. And it's exactly what Ghislaine does to Christine in the De Vedrian one that we did like a few weeks ago, when like she doesn't even call the police, her sister does. And

they show up to Martel and Ghislaine's like, do you see? Yeah. Yeah. Do you see what she's brought up to my doorstep? Absolutely. But Sabjit needn't have worried about the police turning up

because nothing happened. And two weeks later on the 18th of December, 1998, Butch and Cor arrived home alone. She was acting like she never cared in the world. And when Sabjit and the kids asked her where Surgit was, she told them all that Surgit had loved India so much, she decided to stay on a little longer.

And this itself is like so weird because they're not there to visit Surgit's family, they're there to visit Butchans family, the Athwell's family. She's trying to divorce this man and leave this family, but she's decided to stay there with his extended family in a country where she has basically no connections. She wasn't born there. She doesn't have any family there that she's like well connected to as far as I could tell. She's just decided to stay with them has she and leave her kids. Sabjit wasn't buying it and neither was Jagdish, Surgit's brother in Coventry. Surgit had spoken to him in the days leading up to the trip and she told him again how

unhappy she was and that she needed this divorce and that was why she was going to India. So Jagdish called the Athwals and asked them for the number of where Surjit was apparently staying in India and they just ignored him. Jagdish became even more suspicious and after a few more days of nothing from his sister rolled by, he asked Sukhdev to come to the police with him and report his wife, Surgit, missing. And Sukhdev refused, telling him, why are you trying to humiliate both of our families like this? Why do you want to drag us all down to the police station and bring all that shame onto all of us?

the police station and bring all that shame onto all of us. And this is when the story changed. Butshan now said that Surjit had actually run off with some random man while they were all in India. She said that she'd only lied to protect Surjit's honour and the honour of her family. But now with all of these threats of the police, well, they should know the real truth about their daughter and what a shameful hoe she is. Yeah. And she just changes the story willy-nilly and she goes back and forth as well. And you can absolutely tell that the reason she does this is to get Serge's family to stop any

talk of the police because in her mind, she's thinking how she would think that if they believe enough that Serge just ran off with some other man or if there's even a suspicion of that or they even just think that if they call the police and the police come there she'll tell them that and then the community will find out that this will be enough to stop them from going to the police. Like that shame of the fact that she's run off with some man. Is she so despicable? And then, Surgit's father received an anonymous call from someone in India, saying that they knew what had happened to Surgit and that she was dead. So, Surgit's father and his son Jagdish went to the police anyway.

And even if, I don't think anyone believes for a second what Patron says at all, but it is such an obvious, like, pointer to foul play because when has she ever defended her? Ever! When has she ever gone out of her way to be like, oh well, I just wanted to protect her on it. Like, no, you didn't. Obviously no, you didn't. No, and no one's buying it at all as well because Jagdish and Sajid are very close. You know, she had been very frank with her brother about the fact that she wanted this divorce, she wanted out of this family. So why is she now just disappearing and not returning any of his calls and all speaking to him? Why hasn't she called her mother and her father once to say,

oh I'm staying in India? What about these three kids? She wanted to get out of that household for them as well as for her. So none of it's adding up. Rightfully so because spoilers, yeah, Surgit didn't just run off with some man in India. So yeah, as Hannah said, Surgit's family go to the police and when the police turned up at the Athos home, Butcham was all tears, playing the little frail old woman. She begged the police to help her find her daughter-in-law, but again, when asked for a contact number for the family in India that they say Surgit was staying with, the Athos claimed that there was no way that they could be contacted, even though there had been regular calls between her sons and Butchen during her holiday out there.

As soon as the police left, Butchen started finger-pointing, and she pointed those fingers squarely at Sabjit. Who had she been talking to? Sarbjit denied everything but in sight she was panicking. If these crazy people had truly killed Sardjit just for wanting a divorce, what would they do to her if they found out about the letter she'd written to the police? Now is as good a time as any to take a brief pause to talk about the role of women, particularly mothers, in honour-based violence, abuse and murder.

According to research by Rachel Aplin, a criminologist from Leeds Beckett University, mothers are often the unseen force behind so-called honour-based abuse. Examining the police reports of such cases, Rachel noticed that the role of the mother or woman is rarely ever included. The issue seems to be that often the police mistakenly think that the man is the key aggressor and particularly when the victim is a child or another woman they often return to the mother's care, with the police believing that this will protect them. The instinctive reaction from the public and from police officers and social workers is

that mothers protect and nurture and love their children. But according to Rachel, we actually need to rethink that, especially in cases of honour-based violence. And that's because mothers are often the key perpetrators in abuse against other women and girls in these cases. And the figures back this up. From the study, it was found that in cases of honour-based crime, mothers are the driving force, perpetrating in 64% of all cases that involved women.

Now look, the stats in this report are not perfect as there is actually no national or local database of statistics specifically around honour-based violence or abuse in the UK because it's not treated as like a single crime, a single specific crime of honour-based abuse. It doesn't actually exist in the law in this country. And that's possibly because it's quite hard to categorise honour-based abuse because it can include a range of different violent attacks, all the way from murder, unexplained deaths and suicides, false marriage, controlling sexual activity, domestic abuse,

child abuse, rape, kidnapping, false imprisonment, threats to kill, assault, harassment and forced abortion. But while it is complicated and nebulous and all of those things are just as valid as the others, it would be quite helpful to see more of a focus on this specific type of crime, because although there are overlapping similarities between domestic abuse and honour-based abuse in terms of coercive control, etc., there are really quite large differences as well. Unlike intimate partner violence, honour-based abuse is condoned and supported by multiple family members. If it wasn't, it couldn't

be an honour thing. And decisions are made and facilitated by the family group as a whole. And that sets it quite far apart from traditional crimes associated with domestic abuse. And the role of women in policing the behaviour of other women, as well as the potential for female participation in violence or murder, is another key difference from what we might call or imagine to be traditional domestic abuse settings. Yeah, I think there are enough differences here with who's taking part, the type of crimes that are happening and the complicity of the family. It does feel like it should be treated as a separate specific crime, but I understand it's quite hard because it can be so varied.

Yeah, I think it's so difficult to define. But as you've pointed out already, the major difference is that it's abuse that is perceived to be for the good of the whole unit. And it is orchestrated and contributed to and agreed upon by everybody in the group. So yeah. Women included. Women included. And often when the victims are women and children, led by the woman.

Now if you guys remember our 89th episode, which was called The Price of Honour, in that episode we discuss the murder of a teenager named Shafiliya Ahmed in July 2012. At trial, her mother, Fuzana, pointed the finger entirely at her husband for their daughter's murder. And the defence tried to present the mother as a sort of secondary victim, in that by trying to defend Shefalia from her husband's attack, she was pushed away and punched with a clenched fist. But this completely flew in the face of testimony from their other daughter, Alisha Ahmed, which exposed the mother as a willing participant and co-conspirator. She had physically attacked her daughter countless times.

She psychologically tormented her about an intended false marriage in Pakistan. She locked her daughter in a bedroom for two days without food, only letting her out to use the toilet. And on the night of the murder, it was the mother who ordered her husband to kill Shafelia. Over the next few weeks Surgit's family tried desperately to draw attention to her disappearance. They put up posters at the local gurdwara only for the temple elders to take them

all down. I think you can all guess who asked them to do that, it's not difficult. Yeah, Sheila been like that's my daughter-in-law, she broke my heart. She ran off with another man. She's humiliated our family. And her family are trying to compound that humiliation by putting her face everywhere. Please take those posters of that horrible whore bitch down. And they did it. The Met Police even tried to work with Indian police coordinating with them to have the

Uthwalals family over there questioned but as I'm sure you can imagine, nothing came of it. The Indian police simply said that there was a lack of evidence and that Sajjit had just run off with some man. The Met even questioned the Athwals in the UK, but the family just doubled down on their story. They showed the police pictures of S Sabjit happily dancing at the weddings in India and said that they were just as shocked as anyone at her disappearance. Sukhdev then decided to play the victim. He claimed to have driven his coach to Heathrow Airport when a woman came out to speak to

him. This woman, who he called Kate, was apparently a friend of Serge's and she told him, I've spoken to Serge and she told me she's not coming back. According to Sukhdev, this woman, Kate, had refused to give him Serge's new number but she had phoned his wife for him and he said he spoke to Serge. So yeah, don't worry guys, she's still alive. I definitely spoke to her on the phone with this random woman, Kate's phone. And she confirmed apparently that she was indeed not coming back.

She had a new boyfriend in India. Raj. Try a bit harder with the fake names. Even with Kate because the police went to Heathrow airport and tried to find Kate, Catherine, Cathy, anything, and they couldn't find her. So you know, big shock there. But Sukhdev continued the crying in front of the police. He said that he had begged Surya on the phone to come home, telling her to think of their

kids. But apparently she just told him I'm too in love with this mysterious Raj. A question. Mmm. Sukhdev doesn't go to India. He stays in the UK. Yeah. Right. Yeah. He's paid a little trip out there, as we'll go on to discover, but he's not with

them on that particular trip. Right. He's paid a little trip out there, as we'll go on to discover, but he's not with them on that particular trip. Right. Once the police left, the truth came out. One afternoon, Butch and calmly sat down and asked to speak with Sobjit. She told her how Surgit had been happy when they'd arrived in India. They'd had fun at the two weddings. And a couple of days before they were meant to fly home, Butch and said that she'd organized a shopping trip for Surgit, the one that she had promised. But that was all part of the plot. The driver abducted Surgit, strangled her, tied her up and threw her into the Ravi River.

Surget can believe what she was hearing. She knew that they'd done it, but why was Butchen telling her all of that in such detail? I think the only thing, because it does seem strange, but the only rationale I can think of is that Butch and is trying to terrify Subjit. Yeah, absolutely. And Subjit already knows she's under suspicion. Absolutely, because when I was reading the book I was like, why on earth does she keep telling Subjit these things, especially when she keeps accusing Subjit of being the weakest

link of being the one who's likely to tell other people. Why does she keep telling her? But you're right, she's doing it to terrify her. She's doing this as psychological fear. She's like telling her this incredibly harrowing story of what she did to Serge it, saying that subtext is, if you step out of line, do the same thing to you. And also, this is terribly bad taste, but I can't help it. It's a bit of a Colleen Rooney, isn't it?

Because she's saying stuff that might not actually be anything to do with it, but if that gets leaked, she knows where it came from. Yep, absolutely. Overall, what Butcham was saying was, if you step out of line, I'll kill you as well. And no one will know or care because no one knows or cares about the other one. Yep. But Jagdish was not giving up on his missing sister.

On the 3rd of December 2002, four years after Surjit had vanished, he took a petition with thousands of signatures on it to 10 Downing Street and had a face-to-face meeting with then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. Following this, a new investigation into the case was finally reopened and the case was given to none other than super cop DCI Clive Driscoll. And if that name sounds familiar, it's because DCI Driscoll is the man who solved the murder of Stephen Lawrence and finally secured two convictions. King Clive. Clive is, there's a couple of documentaries about this case out there. One

of them is like one of those Britain's darkest taboos and another one, I forgot what it's called but I'll link it in the show notes and they're both on YouTube worth watching and Clive is in both of them and you just want to go out for a pint with that man. He is just solid as a rock. Love Clive. He is fucking great, honestly. And when Clive picked up the case of Sgt. Athwell, it was clear to him that it had sat stagnant for years. And Clive himself admits that it was a hard one for him to wrap his head around. As we've been saying, the names alone were incredibly confusing. They were all over the place in the police notes. But as he dug around in the files, he found the letter that Sabja had written to the police all those years

ago. Clive had never worked a case of honour-based violence like this before. Not one at all, in fact. But he knew that he needed to be careful. And again, I think this is one of the things that shows how intelligent and instinctive and intuitive a police officer Clive Driscoll is or was because he's not practicing police officer anymore. But he said that he knew there would be danger for him to go straight to the Athua's house and try to talk to Sabja, even to go straight to Sabja and talk to her. So he reaches out to Sabja's father and convinced him to get his daughter over to

his house so that Clive could talk to her secretly. Saabjit's father, who for years had dismissed his daughter's complaints about her in-laws and told her that she just had to find a way to get along with them, finally realised the gravity of the situation when Saabjit collapsed and was taken to hospital. Bachchan hadn't even called him to let Sabjit's family know and when they eventually discovered what had happened they found Sabjit in a dire situation. She had a stomach ulcer which had ruptured and nearly killed her. But Sabjet says she almost laughed when the doctor asked her if she'd been under any

stress recently. Just a bit. Yeah, hiding this massive fucking secret and living in a house full of potential suspected murderers. So yeah, ever since the police had questioned the Athwas, life in the house for Sargeant had been unbearable, but she had kept it all to herself until now. She finally, in the safety of the hospital, broke down and told her parents that Sargeant hadn't run off with some man.

The Athwas had killed her. And this is all taking place before Clive gets in touch. This is the father realising what's truly going on in that house. And Sabjit told him that the Athwals had spent the past few years threatening to do the same to her, with Butch and even saying to her in the days before she ended up in hospital, You haven't been to India yet, have you? I must take you. Sabjit's father after hearing all of this had begged his daughter to go to the police and make a statement but she'd refused and he had actually called the police himself which is how Clive knew

to call him. So yeah, Sabjit's father was all too happy to act. So yeah, Sabjit's father was all too happy to act. And in her book, which is called Shamed, as we said at the top, Sabjit describes that first meeting between her and Clive. She screamed at her father when she realized that it was a set up. And she said, you may as well kill me yourself. But Clive Driscoll is Clive Driscoll. He remained completely calm. He promised Surget that he would do everything he could to protect her and her children and get justice for Surget.

And King Clive pleaded with Surget. He needed her help. He couldn't do it without her. He tried to question the people in the community but the sentiment was crystal clear. This was a family matter, not one for the police. Savjit had run off with a man and her family were trying to pin the blame on the Arthwalls rather than take the responsibility for their wayward daughter embarrassing everybody. wayward daughter embarrassing everybody.

Eventually, Sabja opened up to Clive and told him everything. It was exactly what she had put in her letter from all those years before. So Clive knew that her story had never changed. So now DCI Clive Driscoll ramped up the case, even going to India. And there he made a series of interesting and disturbing discoveries. Firstly, he found out that seven months before Surjit had been killed, her husband Sukhdev had gone out to India and that money had changed hands out there. So it was clear to Clive that the organisation of what certainly looked like a hit had been a long time in the planning.

Clive even found evidence from interviews in the local police files that Surjit had been kidnapped, drugged, strangled and thrown in the Ravi River. Just a subject had told him that Butchin had told her. So this also told Clive that the police had known on a long what had happened, but they had not acted. Clearly Sukhdev's payment had gone far enough to grease some corrupt Indian police hands. And there was another letter that he finds out there with the police, which is just so, shows the audacity of the Athwal family.

He finds a letter out there, it's got like a legal letterhead on it, but it's complete forgery and it's been sent to the Indian police by Sukhdev and it basically threatens them saying, you have absolutely no right, because they found the contacts, the contacts, the killers and had arrested them and those contacts had called Sukhdev and said, the police are questioning me, I will tell them who hired me to do this. If you don't get them off my back, pay them off, do what you need to. And so he pays them and he writes in this letter saying that you have no right to be arresting these people. The London Metropolitan Police have dropped this case.

They have agreed that the surger ran off with some women out there. If you continue to pursue this case, we will sue the shit out of you you basically. But it's a completely fake letter from a fake solicitor. And whether they believed it or not, whether the money was enough or not, it's hard to know. But again, it shows the audacity of Sukhdev Athwal that he sat down, wrote that letter and sent it to the police in India and believed that it would work. It did, but believed that it would work. It did, but believed that it would work. By now it was October 2005, nearly seven years after Sajid had vanished. And while the police felt they had more than enough evidence to move forward, they needed to proceed cautiously because despite their pleas, Sjit had gone back

to live with the Uthwells after she got out of hospital. Which may seem like a very odd move, but she does have three children and she couldn't risk losing them or being separated from them, which is exactly what Warchim would have done. So for the sake of her children, Sabjit stayed in the Hell House and continued to live in fear, all the while working with the police. And that brings us back to the 2nd of November, the day that the police finally arrived at the Athwar House, where we started this story. They arrested all of them, including Sabjit, for the murder of Surgit.

And they had to arrest everybody, because Clive Driscoll knew that if they didn't arrest Sabjit, the Athwals would immediately know that she was the mole. So it had all been an act. He had arrested Sabjit for her own sake, and she was quickly taken into protective custody. In the two-year build-up to the trial, Sargeant was still in a state of total fear. She was being regularly accosted by members of the community, calling her an evil, wicked liar who was trying to throw her family under the bus to get her hands on the two houses on Willow Tree Lane. That's what Butchin tells everybody. She's like, she's after the money. She will do anything. She's a cold-hearted, ruthless bitch and she will do anything to get her hands on those

two houses. The only way to do it is for all of us to go to prison. I'm amazed only a stomach ulcer happened. I'm shocked she didn't have a stroke or some sort of enormous brain aneurysm. My god. Honestly. Even Sabjit's own kids who were teenagers by this point hated her. They'd been totally poisoned by their mummy, grandma and their father. But Sabjit held strong and kept it together. She needed a conviction or she was dead meat. It was all over. Yeah, this is the thing. She shows immense bravery, of course, by going through with this and sticking

it out for those two years, but also like the cat's out the bag now. They've been arrested. The trial is coming. If she pulls out now, because Clive Driscoll, that's what he's scared of. He says to subject before I make any arrests, before I move forward with this, I need you to promise me that you will testify because if you don't testify, we don't have, we have, we have evidence, but we don't have enough to secure this without you. You were in that house, you heard everything. And she has to, because she knows if she doesn't and they get out, she's done.

And she was right to be worried. Not just because of the threats that Hardev, her husband, had made, but because this was a landmark case in British legal history. Not only was it the first time honour-based abuse and murder had been discussed in our court system, there also was no body, and the people on trial were being accused of committing a murder on the other side of the world, where the actual killers who'd carried out said murder were still at large and we don't know who they are. Right before the trial, Sabjit's cowardly husband, Hardev, called her one last time and begged her to say that she'd made it all up. Here's what he said, You might get two years for perjury, but my mum and brother will get life if you testify.

Mum will look after the kids until you're out and then we can start again. Yeah. God. It's wild. It's wild. A question. Uh-huh. Which might be a bit GB news, but I'm willing to stick with it.

Let's do it. Ask the hard questions. Why? But should not go back to the Punjab if she hates Western influence so much? I mean, I think that is an incredibly fair question. Thank you. This is my biggest problem with like, when I was talking before about like kind of parallel cultures, parallel societies, I think, you know, some people might misconstrue what I'm about to say, but multiculturalism has failed. I'm all for multi-ethnic societies.

Go fucking nuts. Multiculture implies that everybody can have their own culture that they're working towards, that they have behind closed doors within their community and they don't need to be a part of a greater community, a greater culture that exists within that nation. And that's exactly what's going on here. Butch and people who come to this country who don't want to integrate, who despise the culture of this country and don't agree with living in a Western liberal democracy. My question is why are you here?

That challenge of coming here and then wanting to, because they want to compromise, because they would have a worse situation in a country that they came from that already has the culture that they prescribed to. They want to come here and they want to have some sort of hybrid system, but that's not how it works. Like you have to get on board with what the predominant culture is in this country. No one's saying get rid of the clothes and the cuisine and, you know, however you want to get married or whatever, go nuts.

Those are the things that can enrich for sure. But this kind of dogged, like sticking to the worst parts of the culture from the country from which you left and trying to impose them into the country that you have come into, your adopted country, this is the biggest problem. And that is why these kind of cases are incredibly difficult for our police force to deal with. Because even when we say, why is there no honour based violence, like specific crime being labelled, you can say, oh, it's because it's so complicated. Absolutely. I take that on board. But it is also a particular community in which it happens.

Absolutely. And it's the fear that the police will then have of being labeled racists or racially profiling when they're looking at specific communities for having committed specific types of crime. And you know, people can feel negatively about what I'm saying, but I'm like, ask yourself who are the people that suffer the most because of that? They're the people that are vulnerable within those communities. People like Surgit and Sabjit. Yeah, big size, big, big size. So yes, the good thing here in this case is that Sabjit sticks to her fucking guns and

the trial begins in April 2007. And the whole case really rested, as we've been saying, on subject shoulders. Her testimony was absolutely crucial to securing the convictions. She actually asked the judge and everybody, could she just appear via video link? Could she appear from behind a curtain? And the judge said, no, said, your testimony is too crucial to this. The jury need to be able to see you. They need to be able to hear what you've got to say. So that was refused. I don't know if that

would be different now, but they also do know it's her. You know, I think she just didn't want to see them. So yeah. Yeah, I can understand why, because even though it shouldn't be that way, I have come across circumstances, trial-based ones, where personally, where people may not have felt comfortable testifying in person and they've offered to write letters, do video links, be behind curtains. And the barristers have been like, it doesn't count. It's not good enough. It's not worth it because it's seen as, even though I don't think there's a particular reason for that to be true, it is not counted by the jury as the same as someone who's like, no, I believe this so hard I'm going to sit here in person and say it with my face where you can see me. I don't necessarily think that is fair all

the time, especially in cases like this where the witness is very, really in danger. But there is an unconscious bias around it, I think. I think that's the challenge. We can argue all day long what's right and what's morally wrong. But I think as we have said time and time again, when it comes to trials, it's about an emotional connection with the jury. It's about the story that you're telling. It's about the narrative and who's is more convincing. And if you've got Sukhdev and Bachchan, they're in the dock defending themselves and then the main person pointing the finger at them doesn't, it's not just an AI jury where you're feeding

the information into and they're coming to the correct or the most statistically likely answer. She needs to show her face and that's, that's unfortunately the situation she was in. Now Hardev, after the threats he'd made against his wife had been charged with intimidating a witness, but those charges were dropped. So it was just Butchon and Sukhdev on trial. And predictably, both of them pleaded not guilty. And Butchon in particular was an absolute nightmare during proceedings. She dressed up in her best little old lady garb and she was hyper-dramatic, weeping and wailing and denying everything.

And I love this. She even pretended not to be able to understand English, but then when the judge or the lawyers would say something about her, she would totally lose it. So she obviously could understand what everyone was saying. She really was willing to try sort of every trick in her book. But thanks to the bravery of Sabja and facing down her mother-in-law and brother-in-law by taking the stand and giving evidence for a whopping three and a half days, both Bachchan and Sukhdev were eventually found guilty. And Sukhdev was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 27 years and his mother, Butchern, was sentenced to a

minimum term of 20 years. I can't imagine for a second that she ever, ever, ever thought that was going to happen. No. And Sabjit, despite her fear and the immense challenges of having to go against her entire community, felt so proud of the good she had done in bringing about justice for Surgit, actually went on to become a community support officer to help the Met with honour-based violence and forced marriages. Which is astonishingly brave, like I think most people would be like, I never ever want to think about this ever again. Yeah, she's amazing. Yeah, like I just thought that was an incredible thing to do with her life after everything she'd been through.

And on top of that, she set up a charity called True Honor, which helps victims of honor-based abuse. Still though, it took until December 2012 before Subjit managed to get divorced from Harder. Now, she lives in Surrey with her children, has a happy life, and still maintains a close friendship with Clive Driscoll. And I am jealous. Me too. The subject says in her book, that day in my father's house Clive told me he wouldn't

let me down. And to this day, he's kept his word. He achieved the impossible. He built a case that seemed impossible. He did what no one had ever done before in a British court and secured convictions in a case with no body that had taken place on another continent. Sabjit describes Clive Driscoll as her hero, the man who saved her life. was her hero, the man who saved her life. But in December 2012, when Saabjit, Pav, Saabjit's eldest daughter, and Clive all spoke in Parliament about honor-based crimes, DCI Clive Driscoll, King Clive,

told everyone there that Saabjit was his hero. And that's why we love Clive. Love Clive. And love Saabjit. Because I think, look, even if all she had done was testify, and I'm saying that as a very flippant thing, all she had done, it was a huge thing, she could have just said no. It's the fact that she tried so hard, even before she knew that the murder had happened. She tried everything she could, that she felt she could to stop it happening. She phoned crime stoppers. She wrote that letter to the police. She didn't just wait until the aftermath. She really tried to save Surgit, but she couldn't. And yeah, I would really, really implore people

to go read her book because I think it gives you so much more of an understanding of Sarpjit's upbringing, the community. She really goes into so much depth with this kind of ideas of honour and shame within this community. And also there's just so many little stories there about the abuse that were happening in the house that we just, you know, we'd have been here forever if we were talking about it. All the aggression, all the violence, all the coercion, all the control, the abuse. It was just relentless. It's like being in a

cult. When I was reading it, I felt like I was reading a cult book. That's what it felt like. And Butchin was just, yeah, head of the cult of this one family. And there's just also so many amazing stories in there about Jagdish, Sajid's brother who tried so hard to get her justice. And sadly, he actually died before the trial happened. So he never got to see the justice that Sajid got and how it was really not just thanks to Sajid, but also down to him and the petition he did and getting the case reopened, getting Clive on it in the first place. And also just what a good man he was because he knew that Sabjit

was the answer before Sabjit had opened him up, before Clive, before any of that stuff. And Sabjit said she lived in fear of running into him because she knew, she knew that he knew that she was the only one that could get justice for his sister. And one day she ran into him and she says, I tried to run away. I was in a car park of the temple and I tried to run away. But he didn't, not imposingly, he stopped her and spoke to her. And she was like, I was terrified that he was going to scream at me, shout at me, attack me. And he said, he just said to her, Sabjit, I know you're in the same situation my sister was in and

you must be terrified. And I'm so sorry for everything that's happened to you that I don't even know about. But please, if one day you feel you can speak, speak. That's really sweet. Yeah. So yeah, go read Shamed. It's a really, really good book. And yeah, that is the story of the first ever conviction of

honor-based murder in this country. And yeah, so it's a wild one. I'm glad we got to revisit Clive. Yes, exactly. If nothing else, we got to revisit Clive. It's a sad tale, but yeah, there you go. I did watch another video of a case that was absolutely harrowing and I will find the link and leave it in the show notes, but it was an interview with this woman who was also

Punjabi Sikh talking about how her father and his friends had gang-raped her and then she had been forced into marrying this man and then his father. So her father-in-law had spent years raping her in the family home and how she couldn't escape. Like, yeah, I think it's mind boggling. It really is. And yeah, I honestly wasn't really aware that it was as big a problem in the Sikh community. And again, you know, do I need to say it?

It's not all Sikhs. It's not all Asians. I'll say it. Speaking from, you know, being from an Indian background, of course, it's not everyone in this community. But when it happens, it's happening in these communities. And the people who suffer are the women in these communities. So you cannot talk about it because you feel like someone's going to call you a racist. but I think it's more racist to ignore the plight of these women because who cares about them? Yeah. Cultural relativism is a nice sentiment, but it only gets you so far. Absolutely.

Think well, think big, think strong. That's all I ask. Likewise. And we'll see you next week. Bye. Bye. You know those creepy stories that give you goosebumps? The ones that make you really question what's real? Well, what if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories are not found in haunted houses or abandoned forests, but instead in hospital rooms and doctor's offices? Hi, I'm Mr. Ballin, the host of Mr.ollin's Medical Mysteries, and each week on my podcast, you can expect to hear stories about bizarre illnesses no one can explain, miraculous recoveries

that shouldn't have happened, and cases so baffling they stumped even the best doctors. So if you crave totally true and thoroughly twisted horror stories and mysteries, Mr. Bollin's Medical Mysteries should be your new go-to weekly show. Listen to Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Spotify or Apple podcasts.

Last year, law and crime brought you the trial that captivated the nation. She's accused of hitting her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe with her car. Karen Reed is arrested and charged with second degree murder. The six-week trial resulted in anything but resolution. We continue to find ourselves at an impasse. I'm declaring a mistrial in this case. But now the case is back in the spotlight.

And one question still lingers. Did Karen Reed kill John O'Keefe? The evidence is overwhelming that Karen Reed is innocent. How does it feel to be a cop killer, Karen? I'm Kristin Thorn, investigative reporter with Law and Crime and host of the podcast, Karen, The Retrial. This isn't just a retrial, it's a second chance at the truth.

I have nothing to hide. My life is in the balance and it shouldn't be. I just want people to go back to who the victim is in this. It's not her. Listen to episodes of Karen, The Retrial, exclusively and ad free on Wondery Plus.