Indian-born Oz citizen jailed for attempt to murder in SA

London, June 1 (ANI): An Indian-born former City fund manager has been sentenced to serve nine years in jail for trying to arrange a hitman to murder the father of a PR executive whom he used to stalk.

Shumsheer Ghumman, an India-born Australian citizen, developed an obsession with Hannah Rhind, 30, when she was working as a PR executive for the Roche pharmaceutical company in London.

Ghumman then reportedly offered to pay a gangster 850 pounds to kill Philip Rhind, father of Hannah and a wealthy oil company executive, whom Ghumman saw as an obstacle.

However, when the 'hitman' pulled out of the deal, which prompted Ghumman to try to complete the job himself by throwing Molotov cocktails at Rhind family's imposing sea-front villa in Cape Town.

The disgraced banker's 'brutal, cruel and cowardly' plot was detailed during his trial in the city for fraud, incitement to commit murder, attempted murder and malicious injury to property, following which he was sentenced to nine years in jail.

After they were introduced at a dinner party in 2009, Ghumman, who was then working for Japanese firm Daiwa Asset Management, bombarded Rhind with emails, telephone calls and text messages.

He became so obsessed that in October 2010 he was convicted of harassment at Westminster magistrates' court.

Four days after his conviction he sent an email to Hannah's father Philip, whom he blamed for coming between himself and the object of his obsession, threatening that 'whatever is done to me will be repaid with interest'.

Three months later, in January 2011, Ghumman reportedly travelled to Cape Town where Rhind lives with his wife Deborah.

On arrival, he posed as a freelance photo-journalist called Michael Kirkham and claimed to be researching an article on gangsters and trawled the city's underworld to find someone prepared to kill Rhind.

'I want to meet someone who has absolutely no compunction about behaving with appalling violence,' Ghumman emailed an unwitting middleman.

Rhind described his ordeal as a 'nightmare' saying, "I absolutely believe that Ghumman is a real threat, even now." (ANI)