Channel 4 is to screen a drama based on a former Brighton medical student Mundill Mahil who lured a TV executive to his death 15 years ago.
Mahil was a 19-year-old student at Brighton and Sussex Medical School when she lured 21-year-old Gagandip “Gagan” Singh to her home in Gladstone Place, off Lewes Road, Brighton.
Channel 4 announced today (Tuesday 12 May) that it would broadcast the story of how Singh was beaten and left to die in a burning car.
Mahil was jailed for six years in 2012, having been acquitted of murder but convicted of causing grievous bodily harm (GBH) with intent.
She was released on licence in 2014, having served half of her six-year sentence, including the time spent in custody while awaiting her trial.
After the trial, which took place at the Central Criminal Court, better known as the Old Bailey, in London, Judge Paul Worsley jailed Harvinder Shoker for life for murder.
The judge told him that he would serve a minimum of 22 years for the murder of Mr Singh in February 2011. His accomplice Darren Peters was jailed for 12 years for manslaughter.
Shoker and Peters beat Mr Singh senseless in Mahil’s bedroom as she sat in the kitchen eating key lime pie and ignoring his desperate pleas for help.
The two men then wrapped their unconscious victim in Mahil’s duvet bundled him into the boot of a car which was later set on fire in Blackheath, south east London.
The killing is the subject of a new drama called Vengeance: Murder On The Heath. It draws on police interviews, text messages, court documents and original interviews, Channel 4 said.
During the trial it was alleged that Mr Singh had tried to rape Mahil six months before he died.
She told Shoker, known as Ravi, about the attempted sex attack and he recruited Peters to help in the plot against Mr Singh.
Mahil lured Mr Singh to her student house in Brighton, pretending that she wanted to talk to him. He did not know that Shoker and Peters were lying in wait in the bedroom where they savagely beat him.
The new drama will star Sasha Desouza-Willock (Adult Material) as Mahil, Dee Ahluwalia (Buddha of Suburbia) as Gagandip Singh and Ikky Kabir (Bait) as Harvinder “Ravi” Shoker.
The Halcyon’s Heart Films production will be written and directed by Bafta winner Aysha Rafaele and produced by Meeshan Saxena and Arzoo Patankar.
Rafaele said: “As a British Asian film-maker with a background in documentaries, I am fascinated by real stories from our community that are both specific to the culture but also resonate well beyond it.
“Everything about the shocking murder of Gagandip Singh and the circumstances surrounding it was to prove extraordinary.
“How young everyone involved in the case was, how an accusation of attempted rape led to these young people taking the law into their own hands – playing at being God themselves – instead of just going to the police and how this vigilante-style justice backfired so horrifically.”
Shaminder Nahal, head of specialist factual at Channel 4, said: “This powerful and gripping series takes us straight into the hearts and minds of a group of young people navigating a messy world of blurred lines, fear, shame and violence.
“Aysha Rafaele, who has created and contributed to an astonishing body of work at Channel 4, brings her unique vision and storytelling to an urgent series that asks big questions about modern Britain, what justice means and whether revenge can ever be justified.”
