According to The Independent, a pair of teenagers in London fatally stabbed a 16-year-old Afghan boy on the street after mistaking him for someone else.
Two years before his death in late November 2021, Rishmeet Singh had fled to Britain with his mother and grandmother to seek asylum after the Taliban had killed his father.
The 16-year-old was murdered by Vanushan Balakrishnan and Ilyas Suleiman, both 17 at the time, after the pair chased him down and stabbed him while he “lay defenseless on the floor,” the Old Bailey found on Monday.
After a night out with friends in west London, Singh found himself being chased by two teenagers.
He called out to his friends to “run, run,” but he stumbled and was stabbed at least five times by one of the males as he tried to return to them.
Later, the second man caught up to Singh and stabbed him multiple times. After 27 seconds of violence, the two juvenile defendants fled the scene.
The 16-year-old was pronounced dead at the scene, despite the efforts of police and paramedics.
At a later time, investigators located a photo of a bloody knife that Balakrishnan had taken on the evening of the attack.
Both Balakrishnan and Suleiman were identified by surveillance footage and will be sentenced on April 28 at the Old Bailey.
“Rishmeet was my only child, and he had his whole life ahead of him,” Gulinder, Singh’s mother, said in a statement. Since Rishmeet was taken from us, I have felt an indescribable void that no words could ever fill. He has been brought up in a loving environment, but he cannot take that with him. I just can’t put my finger on why or how this happened to my little boy. For all intents and purposes, I think this is the end of my life now that I’ve lost
everything. This is a loss that I will never get over. I won’t get to see him become a man. I won’t be around to see him graduate from college. It is my firm belief that he will never achieve his goals. His driving lessons will be skipped by me. He will never find love or get married while I am alive. As much as I love my son, I refuse to age along with him and become a grandmother. I feel like I’ve had so much of my life taken away from me. Rishmeet’s goal in life was to become a police officer so he could help people, and he was taking a course in public service at college to get there. Rishmeet was a loyal and kind young man who was loved by all who met him.
I lost my husband and now I’ve lost my only son. Rishmeet has finally been given their due punishment, but I will never feel satisfied with their punishment. They have robbed me of everything, and Rishmeet will never return.
“Rishmeet was an innocent, young 16-year-old who had his whole life ahead of him,” said Detective Inspector Laura Semple of the Metropolitan Police. He’d had a great time with his pals, and he was on his way home when Balakrishnan and Suleiman brutally attacked him with knives. While he lay helpless on the floor, they stabbed him 15 times. Even though there is never a justification for murder, the fact that Rishmeet was the wrong person for his attackers to target only adds to the tragedy of this case. That day, Balakrishnan and Suleiman departed from their apartment with the intent of murder. To put it bluntly, poor Rishmeet was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
