A MAN who tried to kill his son's brother-in-law by running him down and setting him alight has been sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Ratan Singh, 48, of Docking Hill Road, Doncaster, was jailed on Monday after Liverpool Crown Court heard how he hit 26-year-old Mehl Singh twice with his car, beat him and poured petrol over him before setting him on fire.
Father-of-one Mehl Singh, of Brackenbury Road, Preston, suffered burns to his body, a double broken jaw and fractured pelvis and is still receiving medical and psychological treatment.
Ratan Singh pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of Mehl Singh.
Jailing him Judge David Clarke, QC, told Ratan Singh: "This was a terrible crime for which I can find no mitigating circumstances whatever. Whatever the rights and wrongs between his sister and her husband, your son, Mehl Singh, was an entirely innocent man with no direct involvement in that dispute."
Ratan Singh, a father-of-five, had lived in Doncaster after moving there in 1976 from Nottingham. His eldest son, Chiman, wed Mehl Singh's sister in an arranged marriage in 1987, but it did not work out and Chiman was arrested after being violent towards her. Singh tried to effect a reconciliation between the couple but, after his son was jailed, became 'obsessed' about the conviction and felt his family honour had been shattered.
Mr Philip Curran, prosecuting, told the court that on February 29 last year Singh drove to Chorley at about 5.30pm, and when Mehl Singh was about to get into a car parked on Water Street, he heard an engine revving and saw Singh behind the steering wheel of a Renault Laguna. "It was a revenge attack for what had happened to the defendant's family caused, as he saw it, by a member of Singh's family," said Mr Curran.
After the attack Singh abandoned the car in Blackburn and was not tracked down by police until March 10 at a house in Janet Street, Doncaster.
Defence QC Martin Steiger said: "The motivation was caused by a distorted sense of family honour from the unhappy affairs of the son and wife."
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