Satish Sekar

Satish C. Sekar (born September 1963) is a British author and journalist, and a consultant in forensic evidence.[1] Sekar has specialised since the 1990s in the investigation of miscarriages of justice. His work has been published in newspapers including The Guardian, The Independent and Private Eye, and he has also worked for television documentaries including Panorama and Trial and Error. He has worked on a number of high-profile cases in the UK, including those of the Cardiff Newsagent Three, Gary Mills and Tony Poole (wrongly convicted in 1990 for the murder of Hensley Wiltshire), the M25 Three, and Michelle and Lisa Taylor (wrongly convicted in 1992 for the murder of Alison Shaughnessy). He also worked on the case of the Merthyr Tydfil Two (Donna Clarke and Annette Hewins), presenting scientific findings to South Wales Police regarding the fire that resulted in the police's expert accepting his conclusions that the petrol bought by Hewins that night was not the petrol used in the fatal fire. In 1992, his work helped overturn the convictions of the Cardiff Three and while researching a book about the case, Fitted In: The Cardiff 3 and the Lynette White Inquiry, he uncovered errors in the original evaluation of forensic evidence from the crime scene. His submissions to the Home Office about the DNA evidence were instrumental in reopening the case and the eventual extraction of a DNA profile which led to the arrest and conviction of the real killer, Jeffrey Gafoor, in 2003.[2] The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology said that Sekar's "extraordinary work on the case of the Cardiff 3 [put] academic criminology to shame."[3]

In 2010 he founded The Fitted-In Project, a not for profit organisation that conducts projects on justice issues that have not had the attention they deserve. Early in 2021 their project on tariffs will culminate in Sekar's fifth book on justice issues, Bad Form: How Tariffs Protect the Guilty and Punish the Innocent. It highlights the injustice of the real killer of Lynette White being treated more leniently than Yusef Abdullahi and Tony Paris, two of the innocent men Gafoor knowingly allowed to be wrongfully convicted. It will also show how judges have powers that have never been used, to punish real perpetrators appropriately. The Fitted-In Project highlights other vindication cases - cases where the real perpetrator has been brought to justice after a miscarriage of justice, or if the likely perpetrator is deceased, their involvement has been accepted by the authorities. There are eight vindication cases in homicides in Britain and many more around the world.

Fitted-In and Sekar were the only media and journalists in the world excluded from the Lynette White Inquiry Police Corruption Trial, which collapsed in 2011, largely because of the failures of the Crown Prosecution Service. The Fitted-In Project argues that there should be a Truth and Justice Commission to establish exactly why this inquiry was mishandled from start to finish and to facilitate the necessary changes throughout the criminal justice system to prevent repetition. Sekar was appointed CEO of the Fitted-In Project http://www.fittedin.org in 2012. Four of Sekar's books have been published to date. Fitted In:The Cardiff 3 and the Lynette White Inquiry (1998); The Cardiff Five: Innocent Beyond Any Doubt (2012 - 2nd Edition now available); Trials and Tribulations: Innocence Matters? (2017)and Forensic Pathology: Preventing Wrongs (2020). E-versions of the latter two are available through Kindle. His fifth book will be published in February 2021. He also works in sports journalism and established a not for profit organisation. Sekar has highlighted the lack of assistance for sporting icons, especially in Africa for the best part of a decade. Recently he organised a series of Zoom events to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the end of the second trial of the Cardiff Five for the murder of Lynette White. Three discussions are available on The Fitted-In Project's YouTube channel. He also organised the commemoration discussions of Zambian sports icon, Godfrey Chitalu's achievements on October 22nd, which would have been the 73rd birthday of the double world record-holder.

Early life

Sekar was educated at Reynolds High School, Acton, and Thames Polytechnic, where he studied sociology.[4] He has one brother, Chandra Sekar, a barrister. In 2006 Mr Sekar opened a joint account with Barclays in his and his mother’s name to pay for her care bills. Later that year Sekar’s brother Chandra was given third-party authority on the joint account and on 9 January 2007, Satish went to a Barclays branch to confirm that his brother should not be given third-party access to his personal current account as well. Sekar then discovered the primary correspondence address on his personal account had been mistakenly changed to that of his brother’s when a payment bounced in November 2007. He was subsequently offered £77 compensation by Barclays. But Satish alleged that Barclays refused to take responsibility for the mistake. Following several subsequent letters of complaint, and an offer of £350 redress from Barclays, he took his case to Fos. Fos did not believe the £350 offered by Barclays was “sufficient to reflect the distress and inconvenience that its errors” had caused Mr Sekar and said it would recommend Barclays made an offer of £500 compensation instead. But Mr Sekar said: “I am rejecting the ombudsman’s ruling both on grounds of amount and on grounds that it has not brought Barclays to account in terms of improving procedures.”[5]

Bibliography
  • Fitted In: The Cardiff 3 and the Lynette White Inquiry (1997)
  • The Cardiff Five: Innocent Beyond Any Doubt (2012)
  • The Cardiff Five: Innocent Beyond Any Doubt (2017) 2nd Edition
  • Trials and Tribulations- Innocence Matters? (2017)

References
  1. "The Cardiff Five". Waterside Press. 2012. Retrieved 25 November 2012.
  2. "The Lynette White Case: How advances in DNA tests can trap killers from tiny clues". Western Mail. Cardiff. 5 July 2003. Retrieved 25 November 2012.  – via Questia Online Library (subscription required)
  3. Dixon, David (1 December 2003). "Police Reform: Building Integrity". Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology. Archived from the original on 28 March 2015. Retrieved 25 November 2012.  – via HighBeam Research (subscription required)
  4. Campbell, Duncan (17 September 2012). "The Cardiff Three: the long wait for justice". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 19 June 2015.
  5. https://www.ftadviser.com/2014/03/14/regulation/claimant-rejects-fos-compensation-s1XUGkDrFD2rnZ7FEE8HbM/article.html
  • The Fitted-In Project — Campaign group founded by Satish Sekar and dedicated to highlighting miscarriages of justice and promoting policy changes in the criminal justice system.
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