Key points
- Samples were not tested for “nerve agents, biological agents or nuclear agents”: lawyer
- 35-year-old Avtar Singh Khanda died in June 2023
- Family and friends believe his death was suspicious
ISLAMABAD: The family of a Sikh activist who was believed to be on Indian authorities’ radar and died in 2023 have called for a probe into his death in the UK.
35-year-old Avtar Singh Khanda died in June 2023, four days after being admitted to a hospital in Birmingham.
Khanda’s family renewed calls for an inquest after a pathologist found the result of the post-mortem exam “does not mean that a poisoning can be completely excluded”.
According to The Guardian, the official cause of death was acute myeloid leukaemia, a blood cancer.
Alleged foul play
In a letter to the West Midlands coroner Louise Hunt, Michael Polak, a barrister acting for Khanda’s family, said samples were not tested for “nerve agents, biological agents or nuclear agents”, which could have brought about an aggressive cancer, and urged her to reverse the previous decision not to open an inquest into his death.
Khanda’s death, which family and friends believe was suspicious, happened against the backdrop of India’s alleged involvement in an international campaign of transnational repression targeting Sikh separatists, denied by India.
Police probe
According to the Guardian, UK police had said there was no reason to suspect foul play in Khanda’s case, but Polak’s letter includes a witness statement from Jaswinder Singh, a friend of Khanda and an adviser to Sikh Federation UK, who said West Midlands police had confirmed in a 2024 meeting that the police investigation did not include “reviewing (Khanda’s) phones, laptop, talking to his friends, co-workers, searching his home address (or) considering information about attacks on Sikh activists around the world”.
Polak’s letter includes the report of consultant forensic pathologist, Dr Ashley Fegan-Earl, who was provided with Khanda’s death certificate, hospital notes, and a toxicology report. “Consideration should be given as to whether the deceased could have been exposed to substances that may result in the development of an acute leukaemia,” he said.
“Toxicological analysis”
In his statement Fegan-Earl, who was commissioned by lawyers acting for Khanda’s family, noted that “toxicological analysis in hospital did not provide any unusual results” in Khanda’s case, but said the “limitations of such analysis must be borne in mind”, before describing how “not all poisons leave behind them a defined clinical signature” and how some toxins required specialist testing to detect.
