Failed asylum seeker locked up indefinitely for killing devoted father in Broad Green

A FAILED asylum seeker has been committed to a psychiatric hospital indefinitely for battering a man to death with a brick days after being released on bail for robbery.

Rostam Ahmadi, 23, attacked Umess Chaudhari moments after the 41-year-old left his home in Dennett Road in Broad Green to go to work.

Mr Chaudhari's wife and two children ran outside and found Admadi repeatedly smashing a brick into his head.

Neighbour Michal Krzak and another man wrestled the asylum seeker away from his victim and pinned him down on the ground until police arrived.

Mr Chaudhari was taken to St George's Hospital in Tooting, with horrific head injuries and died the next day.

Ahmadi, of Dennett Road, Broad Green, was charged with murder but pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter due to diminished responsibility when he appeared at the Old Bailey today (Monday).

The court heard from a consultant psychiatrist based at South London and Maudsley NHS Trust (SLaM) who diagnosed Ahmadi with paranoid schizophrenia.

Judge Richard Marks QC ordered him to be detained indefinitely under sections 37 and 41 of the Mental Health Act.

Ahmadi was initially thought to be an 18-year-old from Afghanistan but he later told a translator he was born in Iraq in 1989.

He claimed asylum in the UK in 2007 but was refused an extension of his leave to remain in October 2010.

In February 2011 his appeal was dismissed by the UK Border Agency and he should have left the country.

He then robbed Manisha Bungsy of her BlackBerry mobile phone as she walked across Mitcham Common, in Mitcham, on May 30.

Ahmadi was arrested and told police he had been drinking and smoking cannabis.

The Advertiser revealed last July that Ahmadi was then bailed from a young offender's institute less than a week before he attacked Mr Chaudhari.

Judge Marks told Ahmadi: "This particularly tragic event is compounded by the fact that you should not even have been in the country.

"Umess Chaudhari was a good man. He provided not only for his family but his mother in Nepal who had cancer.

"It is a measure of the man that he worked two jobs for 70 hours a week.

"He was in every way a fine upstanding member of the community and a devoted family man.

"For no understandable reason at all you approached him and pushed him over a wall.

"You took him by the neck and, having picked up a brick, you repeatedly struck him over the head.

"His screams alerted his wife and children who came out of the house and saw him in a dreadful state.

"The loss suffered by his wife and children cannot be overstated. The pain they had had to endure is frankly difficult to comprehend.

"It is clear you continue to suffer from paranoid schizophrenia, though you are responding to treatment.

"I have no doubt whatsoever that it was your very serious illness that explains how and why you did what you did."

Mr Chaudhari was attacked as he left to go to work as a stock controller at Tesco Express, in Addiscombe - one of two jobs he worked to provide for his wife Rekha, son Rakesh, 18, and daughter Priyanka, 14.

Rekha, who was in court with Rakesh, said in an impact statement read to Judge Marks: "I lost my loving husband and my children lost their caring father.

"Umess was a friendly person and got on well with everyone. He was popular at work. He was very hardworking and a religious man with a good sense of humour.

"Due to his murder I feel very vulnerable and I fear for my children's safety when they leave the house."

For more on this story see this week's Croydon Advertiser, out Friday (June 22).