Dimensions
163 x 240 x 33mm
Detective Sergeant Gurpal Singh Virdi’s
exemplary career in the Metropolitan Police Service ended when he spoke out
against racism within it: an issue it has long paid lip service to tackling.
What came after is simply shocking. On Wednesday 15 April 1998 Virdi was
arrested, had his home searched and was suspended on charges of sending racist
hate mail to himself and other ethnic minority colleagues. Dismissed in
disgrace, an employment tribunal found that he had been racially
discriminated against. The Met was forced to give him an apology and
compensation. He returned to service but soon discovered, having been passed
over for promotion, that when you challenge an organisation like the Met, you
are a marked man for life.
Freshly retired and due to stand in local
elections as a Labour councillor, Virdi was arrested again and accused of the
most horrendous of crimes: sexually assaulting an underage prisoner nearly
three decades before. When it came to court, it took just fifty minutes to
acquit the former police man of all charges, with the trial judge noting the
likelihood of a conspiracy behind the case. But the damage had been done. For
seventeen years the Met had pursued a vendetta against one blameless individual
who dared to speak out against injustices, and it had driven him and his family
to the edge of the abyss.
This is the deeply shocking story of how one of the
biggest institutions in the country brought the entire apparatus of state to
bear in a campaign to destroy the life of one of its own officers in an
apparent act of revenge.
