We have had the great privilege of speaking to Satish Sekar, who is the most authoritative voice and author on the Lynette White case. It is Satish Sekir who has been proactively pushing the need for the public hearing of Jeffrey Gafoor's latest application for release on parole (his sixth to date), along with a member of Lynette White’s family and a close relative of one the Cardiff Five as well.
it is Satish Sekar’s research work that led to the largest police corruption trial in 2011. Please read the Mouncher Report to read who the key people responsible for the police corruption and those involved in the collapse of this police corruption trial which cost the British tax payer over 30 million pounds.
Satish Sekir is a British author and journalist, and a consultant in forensic evidence. Sekar has specialised since the 1990s in the investigation of injustice. 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 Merthyr Tydfil Two (Donna Clarke and Annette Hewins), presenting scientific findings regarding the fire to South Wales Police that resulted in the force's forensic science expert accepting his conclusion that the petrol bought by Hewins that night was not the petrol used in the fatal fire.
In 1992, Sekar's work helped overturn the convictions of the Cardiff Three, and while researching for 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 getting the case reopened and the eventual extraction of a DNA profile which led to the arrest and conviction of the real killer, Jeffrey Gafoor, in 2003.
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."
In 2010, Sekar founded The Fitted-In Project, a not-for-profit organisation that conducts projects on justice issues that have not had the attention they deserve. Sekar's fifth book on justice issues, Bad Form: How Tariffs Protect the Guilty and Punish the Innocent, will be published in the near future. 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 that judges have powers that have never been used, to punish real perpetrators appropriately. The real murderer of Lynette White is currently in an open prison. His sixth application for parole took place October 3rd 2024. Despite the actions of Satish Sekir, a member of Lynette White's family and a family member of one of the Cardiff 5, who wanted his hearing to be public, Jeffrey Gafoor’s hearing was held in private.
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 several vindication cases in homicides in Britain and many more around the world.
Sekar was the only journalist 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. This was because Satish Sekar was due to be a witness but was never called.
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.
If you would like to read some very powerful cutting edge research, please consider buying some of Satish Sekar’s books:
* Fitted In: The Cardiff 3 and the Lynette White Inquiry (1997)
* The Cardiff Five: Innocent Beyond Any Doubt (2017) (2nd Edition) (Waterside Books)
* Trials and Tribulations: Innocence Matters? (2017)
* Forensic Pathology: Preventing Wrongs (2019)
* Bad Form: How Tariffs Protect the Guilty and Punish the Innocent (to be published shortly).