London: A United Kingdom court handed a suspended sentence to an Indian-origin student who was found guilty of stalking. The 22-year-old is set to leave for Hong Kong after his university expelled him.
Sahil Bhavnani was handed four months’ imprisonment, suspended for two years and imposed a five-year restraining order on Thursday for threatening a female student at Oxford Brookes University.
The verdict was pronounced by Judge Nigel Daly at the Oxford Crown Court after being informed that Bhavnani, along with his father, will return to Hong Kong on Saturday.
“Unfortunately for Mr Bhavnani, it’s [Oxford Brookes University] to expel him from the university and the degree he was on,” defence lawyer Richard Davies was quoted as saying the court by news agency PTI.
A suspended sentence is a sentence on conviction for a criminal offence, the serving of which the court orders to be deferred in order to permit the defendant to perform a period of probation, reported the agency.
According to the Oxford Mail tabloid, the court was due to sentence Bhavnani last month, but when the court heard it could be six weeks before the university decided on whether the engineering student would be thrown off his course, the case was adjourned till January 2022.
However, the university again brought forward the decision to conclude the case this week.
“If you breach that [restraining] order there is a maximum of five years’ imprisonment to serve. I hope that your obsession with her is over,” Bhavnani was told by Judge Daly.
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