Dormers Wells High School shooting

On 11 November 1987, a shooting occurred at Dormers Wells High School in Southall, London, during a Sikh prayer meeting led by preacher Mahraz Darshan Das, 34. Das was a self-styled Guru known for his moderate religious views, which made him unpopular among fundamentalist Sikhs. Two men, Rajinder Singh Batth and Mangit Singh Sunder, had attended several of Das's prior meetings before the attack.

After Das made a statement and walked to the front of the stage, the two men stood up and approached him. Sunder shouted at him in Punjabi before firing a sawed-off shotgun and missing. Batth then jumped onto the stage and shot Das in the back of the head at point-blank range with a .38-caliber revolver, killing him. Batth then turned his weapon on the crowd, striking Satwant Singh Panesar, 41, and Dharan Singh Bimbrah, 53. Panesar died 11 days later from his injuries, while Bimbrah was discharged from the hospital on 20 November 1987.

Members of the congregation rushed to subdue the gunmen. One man tackled and disarmed Batth without further incident. Jaga Singh, 44, pushed Sunder to the ground, disarmed him, and struck him, but Sunder produced a second weapon, a .22-caliber pistol, and shot Singh in the abdomen. Singh died five hours later during surgery at Ealing Hospital. Police and ambulance services arrived shortly afterward; both perpetrators were arrested and treated at a hospital for minor injuries inflicted by members of the congregation. A cassette tape recording hymns and prayers captured audio of the roughly 38-second shooting.

Batth and Sunder, both from London, were described as pro-Khalistan extremists and members of fundamentalist factions within the International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF), motivated by anger at Das's criticism of fundamentalist Sikhs and their calls for an independent Punjabi homeland. Batth, 37 and unemployed at the time, was considered the ringleader; Sunder, 25, worked at a factory. Batth said he had purchased the firearms for about €250 from a man outside a Sikh temple in Handsworth roughly three months before the shooting.

Both men were initially charged with three counts of murder, with Batth additionally charged with malicious wounding related to Bimbrah. The charges were later reduced to one count of murder and one count of manslaughter each. On 1 March 1989, partway through a three-week trial, Sunder pleaded guilty to the murder of Das and the manslaughter of Jaga Singh. Later that month, a jury found Batth guilty of Das's murder, Singh's manslaughter, and malicious wounding. Both were sentenced to life imprisonment, with the judge recommending minimum terms of 20 years for Sunder and 30 years for Batth. Batth was released from prison in December 2021 and returned to India, where he was honoured at the Akal Takht by jathedar Giani Harpreet Singh. Sunder has also since been released.