Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
The story of an extraordinary deception by a ruthless criminal who wanted to get rich at any cost.A man who almost succeeded in outwitting the police by committing a crime so unique and horrific.
No one dare to believe it taken place.
the story begins with a businesss carreer of amarjit chohan.46 year old armajit who also known as Anil ,was born in India and came to England in his early twenties to make his fortune and it worked by 2003 he was the owner of a successsful haulage company Ciba freight ,based close to the international Airport at Heathrow .
By 2003 chohan, a rich man probably a millionaire, people he knew and worked with thougt he was relaxed and friendly.his business style who was informal but obviously successful.he was always on the lookout for new money – making opportunities.
On the 13th of february 2003 he leaves his office apparently to travel wiltshire to meet a man who says he´s interested in buying his company for three million pounds in in casch , unfortunately he didn´t tell anyone exactly where he was going or the name of the person he was planning to meet. but shohan didn´t come back from the meeting that day or the next day or the day after that.
Amarji chohan seemed simply to have vanished .
colleagues at Ciba freight decided to tell the police he was missing ,but experienced detectives know that a missing- persons report can mean many different things.
Amarji chohan ,son and wife nancy.
In fact there was a reason why chohan might have wanted to make himself scarce.maybe even two reasons. back in 1996 he´d been convicted on 13 charges of tax evasion and had been sentenced to three years in prison,he had a reputation for cutting business corners and for financial tricks he said he´d learned in jail.he knew some pretty shady people, some who he´d also met while serving his sentence
He was always looking over his shoulder and feared futher investigation by the authorities.on top of which he´d married nancy ,the second mrs. chohan without actually divorcing the first. He was a bigamist and it was only a matter of time before that came out into the open.
This was a man with things to fear.and things to hide.this was a man with lot of cash and a buisness which made more cash everyday so he was both vulnerable and in trouble.
amarjit chohan went missing after setting off for an apparently routine buisness meeting. he didn´t tell anyone the meeting was set for a country lane in stonehenge
one of Britain´s most famous national monuments,perhaps if he had eyebrows would have been raised but he didn´t. there was no immediate reason for anyone to be seriously worried. But chohan himself was in really deep trouble and there was no way he could tell anyone that was happening When successful businessman amarjit chohan went missing ,no one paid much immediate attention.
His family didn´t raise the alarm, colleagues and employees was used to him being off the radar for a few days,while he did a deal or met up with contacts.neither his family nor his colleagues knew he was worried about the tax authorities again and his private life was extremely
tangled.but in reality his disappearance hada completely diffrent and much more sinister explanation.
He´d been forcibly abducted by three men ,he was being held prisoner in this ordinary looking house nearly a hundred miles from london deep in the english countryside.
Inside chohan is under intense pressure ,he´s being coerced to make phone calls to his wife, telling her that he´s fine and not to worry. what he dosen´t know is that two of the men who were holding him prisoner are on their way back to chohan´s home in West London.
The family home as since been knocked but nancy the 2n mrs chohan was waiting for her husband to get back .
with her were her two young boys aged just 2 months and 18 months and her mother on a visit from india.they were suprised by a knock on the door,two pushed their way in and forced the two women and two little children out of the house and into a hired van.the van drives off at speed.no one know this yet but three adults a toddler and a baby are missing,there are no family members left to tell anyone about it and to raise the alarm chohan´s work colleauges reported him missing.but they didn´t know his family had also vanished .
Back at the bungalow in wilchire where chohan has beinf held prisonser something else going on. chohan is being forced to signe several blank sheets of headed paper from his own company the kidnappers cearly have business in their mind .
The bungalow wa occupied by a mr kenneth regan and his father, no one in the street knew that a businessman was missing from home .for several weeks nothing happened .Mr chohan was missing from work but this was not cause major alarm.no ome knew his family also was missing. whatever mr chohan abducters had planned seemed to be going smoothley and it might have stayed that way for even longer….
But mrs chohan had a brother who lived halfway around the world in new zealand ,for three weeks he tried to reach his sister on the phone without success ,finally he gave up and got on a plane to see what was going on.,finding the house empty and no sign of any single memeber of the family , he raises the alarm and and calls the police.
this all takes time it seeams incredibable but chohan and his his whole family have now been missing for for nearly two months.
it does appear ,what the family have done just up lifted from england and just gone back to India.In fact that´s exactly what the stuff at his compay were thinking.four days after mr chohan first disappeared , the company was bought by someone called kenneth Regan.
He installed a women called belindsa bruin as the accounts manager and the company was being run as normal and e new ownership.
people who worked there weren´t sall that suprised or suspicious ,just thougt it was an other example of chohan not very Ortodox business methods.
But the missing mrs chohan brother dosen´t give up .pressed by him the metropolitan police passed the case to the serious crime directorate in scotland yard, they decide to go back to the company. number 21st of marcch 2003, for the first time they take a statement from the knew owner kennet Regan.Regan shows all his ownership documents to scotland yard´s detectives , it all looks aboveboard.
former ,detective chief inspector dave little , when i reviewed the available information.alarm-bell started ta ring.
for the next month, scottland yard quietly reviews the case.they tracked down chohan´s family home in india, they later sends a team to the Punjab.
Ken Avery / kenneth garett
ken avery was a known career criminal with a lengthy record for drug smuggling and other serious offenses. he had a taste for the high life. funded with with stolen money , after giving evidence against fellow criminals, he was released early from jail under a new name kenneth regan , a new name but with the old -fashioned for cash and power. maybe the new owner of chohan´s company was involved in his disappearence . kenneth regan is now very much on the police radar and worse is to come.the missing persons case is about to become a multiple murder inquiry.
In the early months of 2003 a mystery unfolding that turnes into the longest murder trial in the history of the meropolitan police
The police investigation took detective to india, the United states and three european countries.at first it was a case of missing persons .In april 2003 it became something alltogether different.In the early hourse of the 22nd of april ,two days after easter sunday. a lone boating enthusiast is peacefully paddling around bournemouth pier on the south coast of england, when he bumps into something floating in the water.
He calls the local police.
The object in the water is a dead body ,which as been there for some time.police called in a local pathologist.when the body is taken to the mortuary the hunt for his identity starts. allthough the body is severely decomposed ,the police managed to take his fingerprints.and chohans past is catching up with him having had a criminal record for fraud his fingerprints were inte the file. the body floating in the water was that of the missing businessman. at this point the chohan case lands backon detective chief inspector dave little desk.
And there were clear signs that chohan had been murdered.he had a very severe head wound and ramains of a gag on his face.(possible blindfold) This was no accidental drowning.
It was a series of turns of brown adhesive parcel tape,mingled with a red and white scarf,it went round and round the head below the nose, right across the mouth and attached at the back of it was the rest of the roll of tape.so that was all sort of hanging on the back and and the little bridge of tape between the turns around the face and the roll itself had gone into a thin strong string.of that ground parcel tape.
A gag may kill you. mr chohan may actually have been killed by the gag.
The only lead that chief inspector Little has is Ciba freight.chohan´s old company and it´s new owner ,kennet regan. Regan appeard to be very relevant and he had and had fallout throughout his life manipulated people .he had a persona far greater than his real worth. when i came out of prison after the drugs case ,he had obviously had access to far less money than he had been previously , he was called ” captain cash”everybody that he´d met with ,he lived the high life, he always had money also cash around him.
55 years olf regan may not have had the looks of a wealthy playboy and international criminal mastermind ,but that´s how he saw himself.
Back in 1997 as the money rolled in from his drug smuggling enterprises he was called ken avery and drove around in a Mercedes. reveling in the nicknamn of “captain cash” but he sailed too close to the wind and in 1998 he was jailed for his involvement in a heroin smuggling ring and a passport racket
Avery had no intention of spending valuable time in prison, he turmed on his co – defendants, gave evidence against them and was rewarded with a shorter sentence ,just four years.
In 2003 ,avery was out of jail. he´d changed his name to regan and was the new owner of Ciba Freight.he asked a women friend called belinda bruin to join the company to join the company as managing director and credit controller,he offers her a salary of 72 thousand pounds for a position which she has no qualifications whatsoever.
ken and belindas relationship goes back to 1997.when they meet in the Ritzy top floor bar of harvey Nichols one of Londons smartest departements stores. Regan showers her with offers of glamorous trips and expensive gifts .the relationship fizzles out while regan is in jail but sends a condolence note to her ,when he reads about the death of a celebrity friend and he looks her up when he is released.
her own life has taken a turn for the worse. although she has the outward trappings of wealth,her partner has by now left her.she´s left with mortgage,repayments and school fees and risk loosing her 50 acre estate in Devon.Regan is recently out of jail and need someone to run the cimpany,he´s aquired , someone he can use as a respectable front .so, just when she´s strapped for cash ,he persuades her to join his newly aquired company.Ciba Freight.
At this stage chief inspector little had no way of connecting kenneth regan to the killing but it was regan himself who handed the police the clues they needed because he panicked .
On the day mr chohan had left his office for the last time ,he was actually going to meet regan on the pretext of a business proposition, when he got to the meeting in stonehenge ,regan with two accomplices william and hornsey ande peter rees force chohan into the van and drove him to regan fathers´s house. where they held him captive.
two days later regan and hornsey ,traveled back to london. and persuaded mrs chohan, her two tiny children and her mother to leave with them.
They were bundle into the van and taken to wiltshire to be united with mr chohan.sometimes over the next four days ,the entire family was murdered and their bodyies were taken to Tiverton in Devon,where they were buried in a field so far regan´s crime was completely undetected . there was nothing to connect him directly to the family´s disappearance, if he´d done nothing further regan might have got away with his crime
But then he made a huge misstake.If regan had left the chohan family bodies buried where they were things might have been different but he senses the the police are closing in on him.
Over the easter weekend of 2003 when a body is found floating in the sea by bournemouth pier, a missing- persons case became a murder case
and regan came up with a elaborate plan to try to make the police believe he knew chohan was alive and well , he told police he had a meeting arranged with the missing man near a bronze statue of a pig in south wales and all they had to do was come along and watch.
undercover detectives monitor the rendezvous point in the centre of newport south of wales.but of course chohan, fails to turn up.Regan thougt he ´d laid a false trail to throw the police off him.
On easter saturday ,regan and his accomplices go back to devon and dig up the five bodies. two months after they were murdered .
Regan buys a boat and the next day the three of them sail out to sea.the whole chohan family is brutally disposed of ,tipped into the cold waters of the english channel. regan thought this would put him in the clear, the bodies would never be found,the police would not have no leads.
He though from his previous encounters with the police that he had special insight into their way of thinking. meanwhile dave Little decide to meed belinda. he needed to understand her role in this story .but she can tell him nothing at all ,belinda was not charged with any offense in connection with the case.
As soon as regan had dumped the chohan family bodies in the sea. he decided to flee. He Catches a ferry to france with william H.Rees goes on the run and hides out with a friend in Gloucestershire . Then mr mr shohan´s body is found in the sea,clearly a murder victim.
now police have suspects on the run and a mystery to unearth , where is the rest of mr chohan´s family?and as yet not a shred of evidence with which to build a case. The first thing the police did ,was to search chohans home in london for evidence.
And david little gets some very interesting news. from the pathologist,who´d been examining the body of mr chohan. the most distinctive items of all the other things was a series of bindings around the lower head and face.
it was described as a gag – “gag” in quotes ,because it´s not necessarily fair to describe something as a gag after a body´s been in water for a conisderable lengt of time, things slip and move about but it looked very much like it.
and it was one more suprise to come ,the condition of chohan´s body suggested to the pathologist,that he might have been buried on land before being dumped in the sea.somehow,his body had been protected from infestation by flies when.
This completely alters polisinvestigation and there was a further sign that chohan´s body might have been dug up from a grave.
experienced detectives knwo where to start looking when they´re searching for the grave of a victim of crime. Brian hook knows from many years of policing that therre are paterns to criminal behavior.
Now that mr chohans body has been found this investigation goes to a whole new level.but there´s a discrepancy .mr chohan has been missing for longer than he´s been in the water.the police are now going to look and their main suspect mr regan .if mr chohan´s body has been held somewhere it ´ll be somewhere where regan iis comfortable with ,with people he trusts.
Belinda is interviewed again and she let slip that she knows about the hoax meeting at the bronze pig in south wales and that´s the piece of the jigsaw puzzle dave little needs .have been talking about chohan, and david little suspect that regan would have thought that belinda spacious grounds in devon were a safe place to bury a body.
Little sends a team down to her country estate ,he had good reason to think regan might have been there. the police dig a trench in the grounds of belindas estate and find what they ´re looking for. the burial site far to big for one body.
this could have been the burial site for an entire family.it was more and more clear,that police were dealing with a muiltiple killing.
Belinda said she had no idea the bodies were buried on her land. Now the detectives have to track down kenneth regan and put together the evidence they need to take him to court and pay for his callous crime.
Three month after businessman Amarjit chohan first went missing the metropolitan police now know they´re dealing with a murder case.
mr chohan was definitely a murder victim and his body had been found, his wife , mother- in-law.and two children were still missing.
but the size of the grave found in Devin offered a grim clue. to their fate and detective chief inspector dave Little is closing in on his prime suspect kenneth regan.Dave littles team examined all the phone evidence they could get hold off wich connected kenneth regan and his accomplices.
And in the UK police are able to use cameras fitted with software which identifies car owners from their register phone .DCI Littles team trace ken regans movement.
The white van has been presure hosed inside but that´s far from bad news from the scene of crime officers, a criminal can use a pressure hose and think he washed away all traces of his crime ,but in the reality the hosing makes the job easier for the police .
But it´s not al plain sailing for for DCI little team. Regans home adress is his fathers bungalow in wiltshire .everything points to this being where chohan was held and probably where the rest of his family brought to .there´s a strong posibility this is where all of them were killed.the scene of crime team is sent.
There may not have been much forensic evidence but there was enougt to convince polis.
this was the right place . so it was probably here that mr chohan was held for three days drugged and gagged ,forced to make telephone calls to his family and sign away his freight company to ken regan .
but shohan shows extraordinary bravery during his ordeal , while left alone in the bungalow ,he finds some letters with regans adress on, he picks one up right a message on it about what was happening,folds it into quarters and eights and slips it inside his sock,he put his shoe back on and waits for his fate.
after the autopsy .a forensic scientist was routinely analyzing chohans personal effects and clothing, he found the astonishing and vital clue still stuck inside chohans sock.
Dave littles evidence against regan and his accomplices is mounting, now all he has to do is find him and bring him to justice.
On the day that regan and his accomplices dumped the shohan family in the sea , they go on the run ,regan just gets in his car and keeps driving and takes the cross -channel ferry to heads for spain.
On the 8th of november 2004 kenneth regan ansd his two accomplices william horncy and dave rees are brought back to the old bailey after an 8 -month murder trial regan and horncy convicted of mr chohan and his family murder and and receive whole life sentences.
Rees got 15 years convicted of just chohan´s murder. the actual cause of death has never been fully established but police believe all the family members were probably strangled .the fact that the bodies of the children were never found did not alter the courts view that they were murder victims.
Sentencing the convicted men the judge said ” the misery pain and suffering which you have visited on the surviving members mr and mrs chohan´s family are immeasurable.Not lesat because of the contemptible treatment of the bodies of their relatives and not least because the bodies of those two tiny children ,have never been recovered”
the bodies of the two chohan children have never been found,their grandmother´s body washed up on the Isle of Wight in september. 2003.their mother was hauled up in a fishing net that july.
This was a killing motivated by greed ,a man who wanted cash quickly
a man ruthless enough to kill an entire family in order to steal their business , a man willing to cross the line to get what he wanted……the end.