Fake interpreter turns up at Indian woman's murder
trial
The trial
of a 37-year-old Punjabi woman, accused of killing her mother-in-law with a
rolling pin, was stopped by the judge after the interpreter confessed half an
hour later that he was a fake and filling in for his busy wife.
Rajvinder
Kaur has been sentenced to life imprisonment. She would have to serve a minimum
term of 11 years for battering her mother-in-law Baljit Kaur Buttar to death at
her home in Southampton in February last year, the Daily Mail reported
Saturday.
The judge
halted the trial when the court realised interpreter Mubarak Lone was leaving
out key words and phrases in his translating.
Lone was
interpreting for Kaur's husband, Iqbal Singh, who spoke Punjabi. He struggled
to even get the oath right for the Sikh witness at the Winchester Crown Court
in Hampshire.
The fake
interpreter was finally caught by junior counsel Sukhdev Garcha, who also spoke
Punjabi, half an hour into the trial.
Lone
confessed that he was not a qualified translator and was awaiting the results
of his interpreter test.
He later
revealed that his wife - the actual interpreter - was busy and he had come to
do her job instead.
Defence
barrister Jonathan Fuller said Lone wrongly translated words, such as saying
"bitter" instead of "irritable" and "Allah"
instead of "one god".
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