The daughter of noted UK-based Punjabi singer Malkit Singh MBE of “Gur Nalon Ishq Mita” fame has been sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for having sexual relations with her pupil, a minor with learning problems.
Amardip Bhopari, 28, who began teaching at a school for children with learning difficulties in 2012, had confessed to the charges and was arrested in December 2013. She was sentenced on Friday. Her father has remained incommunicado ever since news of the case spread.
According to reports, Amardip’s relationship with the 16-year-old boy, who suffers from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia, started just before Valentine’s Day in 2013. The British media reported that her sexual encounters took place in the school art room, her car and even at an industrial estate near the school. She used to shower gifts on him and invite him home.
Judge James Burbidge QC said “I do not suggest you sought him out as vulnerable.
“However as a teacher you owed him a duty of care that all teachers must owe to a child.
“You had sex with him in public places, on an industrial estate and hotels and you also provided him with experiences that, as a 16-year-old, meant that he would be attached to you.”
Hugh O’Brien Quinn, prosecuting at Birmingham Crown Court, said the defendant started working at the academy school, which catered for pupils with learning difficulties or behavioural problems, in December 2012.
He said there was an occasion when the victim, who was in the teacher’s art class, wrote his phone number on the back of a piece of paper and she subsequently rang him.
Mr O’Brien Quinn that the conversation was “sexual” and over the next few nights there were further calls.
He said the first physical contact took place just before Valentine’s day in 2013, when Bhopari texted the boy and told him to meet her in the art room before classes began, where she performed a sexual act on him.
Further sexual activity took place at an industrial estate near the school and they went on to have sexual intercourse in the teacher’s car on a number of occasions while they also had sex at her home.
Bhopari also took the victim, who suffered from ADHD and dyslexia, to a Formula 1 hotel on his birthday where they stayed all day and where the defendant gave him vodka.
Mr O’Brien Quinn said although the boy had indicated he was not looking for any kind of relationship Bhopari continued to contact him frequently and ask him to meet up.
He said Bhopari had also taken the teenager to Drayton Manor Park where she “paid for everything he wanted” and that she had also allowed him to drive her car even though he did not have a licence.
When the boy started dating a girl his own age and told Amardip that he wanted to end their relationship, she tried to dissuade him.
Amardip’s advocate told the court that she had deep remorse. Judge James Burbidge ordered that she be put on the sexual offenders’ register for 10 years.
IP Singh,TNN
