Examination of Witnesses (Questions 399
- 420)
TUESDAY 4 MARCH 2008
MS KIRANJIT
AHLUWALIA AND
MS HANNANA
SIDDIQUI
Q399 Chairman: Ms Ahluwalia and Ms
Siddiqui, thank you very much for coming to give evidence. You
very kindly gave evidence to us in private. We felt it was appropriate
to take short evidence from you in public otherwise we would have
had a session consisting entirely of ministers speaking and your
comments as a victim are very important. The whole world knows
about your history, Kiranjit Ahluwalia, the violence that you
suffered at the hands of your husband over ten years, the fact
that you were imprisoned and the fact that there was a campaign
led by the Southall Black Sisters for your release. You are now
back to what can be described as a normal life considering what
you had to go through in the past. Do you feel that the criminal
justice system let you down in your case?
Ms Ahluwalia: Yes. First of all,
they never understood my family honour or religion. It was a situation
I was facing in my community and in my family. My marriage was
not a forced marriage, it was an arranged marriage. From the first
day of my marriage my husband started beating me. I was not allowed
to talk to my family or do anything. I ended up in prison. I thought
I would get justice from British law, but they could not understand
Indian culture, family honour, religion and the society I was
brought up in. I ended up with a life sentence. I suffered 10
years with my husband and the law gave me 13 years, which was
total injustice. Southall Black Sisters came along and they started
my campaign. My story was put forward in the media after they
found me a good solicitor.
Q400 Chairman: Do you feel that the
criminal justice system let you down?
Ms Ahluwalia: I went to the police
station twice and I went to court twice. When I went to the police
station the policeman said, "You'll have to sort yourself
out. We don't want to interfere in your married life". I
went to family and the same thing, they said they did not want
to interfere.
Chairman: I am now going to move on to
Mr Winnick who has specific questions about family and community
issues.
Q401 Mr Winnick: As the Chairman
said, everyone knows of the terrible plight that you suffered
at the hands of your husband. When this was happening, he was
beating you and other forms of cruelty, what did you find within
the family? Were you able to speak to the family on any occasion
about what was happening?
Ms Ahluwalia: Yes, of course.
My in-laws knew that my husband was very short tempered and very
violent towards his mother and sister and to me from the beginning
of the marriage.
Q402 Mr Winnick: They knew what was
happening?
Ms Ahluwalia: They knew that.
Q403 Mr Winnick: That was his family?
Ms Ahluwalia: Yes. They never
interfered. They said, "We are sorry, we can't do anything.
He doesn't listen to us." After that I went to see my family
in India and I showed them my bruises and my brothers and sisters
were really angry with my husband. But did my husband apologise?
I wanted to have a divorce. My family, brothers and sisters, said
I was not allowed to have a divorce because it was not acceptable
in the family or in the community, they said, "What would
other people think?" So I had to go back to my husband. Then
I went to the police twice and I went to court and got a court
injunction. None of them could help me. In the end I tried to
kill myself twice and I ended up in hospital. Nobody helped me.
Q404 Mr Winnick: I can imagine how
distressing it is for you even now. When you went to the hospital
it was in this country, was it?
Ms Ahluwalia: Yes, Crawley Hospital.
Q405 Mr Winnick: And they saw the
injuries that you had suffered?
Ms Ahluwalia: Yes.
Q406 Mr Winnick: Did they not ask
you whether they should report these injuries to the police?
Ms Ahluwalia: When I ended up
in prison my doctor's report was there. He saw the injuries to
my arm and my shoulder. Even the hospital report was there, the
year I went to hospital and tried to kill myself, all the reports
were there, but still I could not get any justice from British
law. Everything was there. Even my husband's family was there.
His uncle was there and he was willing to give evidence on behalf
of me.
Q407 Mr Winnick: Was this an arranged
marriage?
Ms Ahluwalia: My sister was living
in England and I was in Canada. My sister's friend was friendly
with my husband's mother. They talked and said how that they were
looking for a girl and my sister said that they were looking for
a boy in the same cast. Cast is very important as well. My brother
told me I could not get married out of cast. I never had a boyfriend
and was never allowed to talk with men. My brother was very strict.
They were willing to give me money but I was not allowed to go
out with my friends. It was arranged within the family. I saw
my husband for five minutes and I asked him two questions.
Q408 Mr Winnick: Five minutes before
the marriage was the first time you saw him?
Ms Ahluwalia: Yes. My brother
asked me if I wanted to ask any questions and I said yes and I
was allowed five minutes in the next room. All I said to my husband
was I wanted to study after the marriage and I did not want to
wear Indian dresses.
Q409 Mr Winnick: Was his conduct
cruel from the very beginning?
Ms Ahluwalia: When I came back
to the airport he came to pick me up and a couple of hours later
he pushed me and held my chin against the wall. He just tapped
on my head. I thought, "What sort of joke is this?"
I said not to do it again. I felt faint because he hit me a bit
hard. I thought it was a joke, but it was not a joke. The next
day after our marriage I was just talking to his sister, introducing
my family back home and she was introducing her family and my
husband came and pushed his sister and pushed me against the wall
and he was slapping his sister and me because of nothing. He had
such a short temper.
Q410 Mr Winnick: Can I bring you
to the situation later where you were charged with the murder
of your husband. Were the police at all interested in what had
happened to you during your years of marriage? Did they ask you
questions or did you tell them how you had been treated?
Ms Ahluwalia: The police were
only interested in arresting me. They kept saying to me, "Tell
us what happened. Why did you do that? What have you done?"
All the time they were interested in what I had done. They were
not interested in what I went through. I was trying to explain
it to them. One policeman came in and he said, "We are charging
you, Mrs Ahluwalia, with attempted murder." I did not understand
the meaning of "attempted", so I asked him to explain
it to me and he did. Even though I was admitting everything, this
is what happened, this is what I have done in the end after ten
years, he was saying, "No, tell us more." He was tapping
on the table and trying to scare me. My English was so poor. I
had been educated in India, I could speak English, but I lost
my confidence while I was living with my husband. I could not
explain it to him. There was nobody who could translate for me.
Q411 Mr Winnick: No one at all?
Ms Ahluwalia: No.
Q412 Mr Winnick: The police did not
offer an interpreter?
Ms Ahluwalia: No.
Q413 Mr Winnick: Did your defence
counsel put your case in court, how you had been treated throughout
your marriage, the cruelty and the violence?
Ms Ahluwalia: Not really. I could
not explain things to my defence solicitor. When he was preparing
the case for my trial I gave him 35 pages of my life history.
Even though I kept telling my solicitor or barrister, "I
need an interpreter. I want to tell you more," they kept
saying, "Mrs Ahluwalia, you do not need an interpreter because
your English is quite good, we understand," but I wanted
to go into the details. I could not explain it to them until I
ended up with a life sentence. Southall Black Sisters could understand
Hindi, Punjabi and English. Then I explained my whole story to
them and when they did my case for my appeal there were 350 pages
in my statement.
Q414 Mr Winnick: When we were speaking
to the minister the Chairman and other members of the Committee
were very determined that the Southall Black Sisters should not
go out of existence because of the current financial difficulties
they are facing. What advice would you give to other women in
your situation? What would you suggest they do?
Ms Ahluwalia: I would tell them
not to suffer in silence. The family honour is not that important.
Now we are living in a modern society. You must come out with
your children. If you cannot call the police, if you are too shy
or too scared, go to an organisation like the Southall Black Sisters
or any other organisation that can understand your language and
they can explain where to go and how to get there.
Mr Winnick: I am most grateful to you.
Thank you.
Q415 Chairman: Ms Siddiqui, you and
Southall Black Sisters took up the case and supported Kiranjit
Ahluwalia despite the circumstances of it. Have things got better
over the years for the victims of domestic violence that you deal
with?
Ms Siddiqui: For women in minority
communities in some respects things have got better in terms of
after the Kiranjit Alhuwalia case there was greater awareness
within Asian communities around domestic violence, but I think
we have still a very long way to go in changing attitudes within
communities. Outside of the communities, I think one of the things
that we have seen is the discrimination women face from agencies
like the police, how there are issues around cultural sensitivities,
which is one of the reasons why they do not intervene in minority
communities to protect women. Despite some improvements in policing
generally around domestic violence, the response with minority
communities I still think is very poor and very inconsistent and
not only in relation to forced marriage and honour-based violence
but domestic violence quite generally, including women who have
immigration problems. There is a lack of understanding of how
issues around destitution, no recourse to public funds and immigration
as well as cultural and religious pressures impact on their lives.
Q416 Chairman: Where do they go?
Kiranjit suffered violence on a daily basis for ten years. She
tried to commit suicide. She went to her GP. She went to the police.
Where do they go?
Ms Siddiqui: Black and minority
women's organisations are the grass-roots organisations that provide
frontline services often with great hostility from the community
and a lack of support from outside of their community. That is
the very sector, the specialist sector, which is now under threat
with cuts in funding from local authorities and other bodies around
the commissioning process and around the mainstreaming of services,
which means larger organisations are able to win tenders for bids
for funding and where local authorities are using issues such
as community cohesion to deny funding for what they see as single
ethnic group funding. That is one of the reasons our local authority
in Ealing has been using to try to cut our funding. They are saying
there is no need for specialist services, there is no need to
have single ethnic group funding because that undermines their
community cohesion strategy, but at the same time they want to
fund Muslim women's groups when there is no demand for such services
in the area and all they are doing is duplicating our services.
Q417 Chairman: We have raised this
issue before you came in. On the night that Ms Ahluwalia's husband
died she ran into the garden with her son and hid behind a shed.
She did not run away from the police, she was still there. How
old was your son on that day and what happened to him?
Ms Ahluwalia: He was about two
and a half. My husband put a hot iron on my face and he broke
my teeth. He did all sorts of things to me. I poured petrol on
him because he had been evil to me so many times when I tried
to run from him.
Q418 Chairman: What happened to your
son after that?
Ms Ahluwalia: I picked my son
up and hid behind the shed.
Q419 Chairman: Was he taken into
care or was he taken into the care of the family?
Ms Ahluwalia: My mother-in-law
kept both my sons for several months.
Q420 Chairman: How old are they now?
Ms Ahluwalia: One is doing law.
He wanted to be a barrister. My eldest son graduated in computing.
I am very proud of them.
Chairman: Kiranjit Ahluwalia, this Committee
is enormously grateful to you for coming in today. We regard you
as a brave and courageous woman and we thank you very much. We
are honoured to have you here.
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