Harshita Brella was a young women, like many others with her whole life ahead of her. She was tragically and senselessly murdered and left to be found in the boot of a car.

I never met Harshita and I do not know her, but what I do know is that her death was utterly avoidable. I know this because I live in the county of Northants where Harshita lived, and I like so many others have been failed by Northants Police, in particular their Protecting Vulnerable Persons unit.

Harshita was the subject of a Domestic Violence Protection Order issued by Northampton Magistrates Court in September 2024. She, like all victims of domestic violence should have been subjected to regular welfare checks and efforts made to protect her from her abuser.

Sadly in Northants, protection of victims just does not happen. At the same time that he should have been deploying resources to protect women like Harshita, the man in charge of PVP, Detective Superintendent Joseph (Joe) Banfield was instead authorising the deployment of 8 officers to arrest the victim of domestic violence, Maria Botterill-Barnes.

Maria is no different to Harshita in that she was a victim of abuse and found the courage to report her abuser and go public with her story. The fact her abuser was a local politician with a shared history and friendship with DSu Joe Banfield, meant that she was subject to 8 officers trying to arrest her for having the temerity to report a crime, something deemed as “harassment” of her abuser.

Press involvement has meant that DSu Banfield has backpeddled on this, agreeing this was not proportionate. These are not isolated incidents and many people within Northants are subject to these reactive arrests as a means of intimidation into dropping complaints.

The excessive use of resources to arrest a single women in her 50s, when these officers could have been better used to perform welfare checks and respond to crime show how utterly inept DSu Joe Banfield is. The fact this deployment of officers was not an error in judgement but appears more to be a deliberate attempt to intimidate Maria demonstrate that DSu Joe Banfield is unfit to hold a warrant card, much less run the PVP unit.

How many other revenge driven resources decisions has he made that have failed victims? Harshita lost her life and it appears this was utterly avoidable had resources been better managed.

We demand the immediate suspension of DSu Joe Banfield leading to his removal as a Police officer. If he has any sense of guilt over what he has done then he will do the decent thing and resign in shame.

Myself and others already had a march planned for Monday 25th November 2024 at 4pm in Abington Street Northampton about existing failures by DSu Banfield and his PVP team, this tragedy just serves to highlight why we organised this and we will be holding the march in honour of Harshita Brella.

In the meantime please sign and share the petition to ensure that the man who has Harshita’s blood on his hands does not escape scrutiny and is prevented from carrying out more vendettas against victims with his revenge based resourcing.