On 9th May 1989, after enduring 10 years of verbal and physical abuse from her husband, Kiranji Ahluwalia threw petrol in his bedroom and set it alight. Her husband sustained burns which led to his death 6 days after the incident on 15th May 1989. Ahluwalia was indicted for murder with her trial starting on 29th November 1989 at Lewes Crown Court. On 7th December, she was convicted by a majority of ten to two and the judge imposed upon her the sentence of life imprisonment. Ahluwalia was advised by her then legal team, who represented her at her murder trial, that there were no grounds for appeal. Her case was then taken up by Southall Black Sisters (SBS), an advocacy service for black and Asian women, and through their continued campaigning and legal work, her appeal was finally successful in 1992, on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
In September 1991, Ahluwalia was given leave to appeal on the basis of new evidence concerning her experiences of domestic violence, and its impact on her, and on the basis that the trial judge had misdirected the jury on the criminal law of provocation. At the 1989 trial, provocation was a secondary line of defence, however the Court of Appeal did not extend the provocation defence to the circumstances of the killing of her husband. Whilst the court recognised that a loss of control following the provocation should be ‘sudden’, it noted it did not have to be immediate. Instead, the court allowed her appeal admitting fresh evidence of endogenous depression that the court recognised may have diminished her responsibility for the killing. Ahluwalia won her appeal on the grounds of diminished responsibility based on new psychiatric evidence of her long-standing depression due to her experiences of violence and abuse. A retrial was ordered. At the retrial at the Old Bailey in London in September 1992, the Crown accepted her plea of manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility and she was sentenced to three years and four months imprisonment, exactly the time she had already served. Ahluwahlia therefore walked out of Court a free woman to scenes of jubilation from the large number of supporters who had gathered outside.
Despite the prominence of this case on domestic abuse, it is evident that the laws around domestic abuse and killing in self defence have differed only marginally. First of all, although on appeal Ahluwalia was finally released, effectively she was released because the court deemed her mentally unwell, therefore failing to take into account the chronic abuse she suffered. This has subsequently been seen in at least 14 more cases since 1997.
Following Ahluwalia’s case, the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 abolished the defence of provocation and replaced it with loss of control, which “better reflects women’s reality while not being lenient on men who claim that they lost self-control due to adultery or in anger” (According to Pragna Patel, director of the campaigning charity Southall Black Sisters, a group fighting for women’s rights). However, defendants still have to meet one of two qualifying triggers to show that the fatal act resulted from a loss of control: either that they feared serious violence or that things said and/or done constituted circumstances of an extremely grave character and caused the defendant to have a justifiable sense of being seriously wronged.
Although there has been more awareness to the cases of domestic abuse and murder in light of self-defence through this case, there have been various other notable instances similar to this like the case of Sally Challen (who successfully appealed against her conviction for murdering her coercive and controlling husband in 2019). Furthermore, various campaign groups, such as the one aiding Kiranjit Ahluwalia (Southall Black Sisters) and other groups like Rights of Women, have been influential in cases to aid those in similar circumstances to Ahluwalia. Crucially however law reform is still needed to contribute to a fairer judicial system for women subject to domestic abuse.
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