Rohit Duggal was born 21 May 1976 and was of Indian descent, born and raised in Britain. He was raised by his mother after his father left the family while he was young, and he was described as a keen cricketer who hoped to play for Kent. He attended Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School, a predominantly white school, and had recently passed his GCSEs at the time of his death.
On 11 July 1992, Duggal was returning home from a party with a group of white male and female friends. The group stopped at a kebab shop on Well Hall Road in Eltham, south-east London, to order food and ask for directions to a taxi stand. As they left, a group of white youths, described as a gang, began to harass Duggal. When Duggal's group was blocked by traffic and unable to cross the street, one of the gang members brandished a knife. Duggal attempted to calm the situation before running across the road. He was pursued, accosted, and stabbed through the heart, dying shortly afterward.
Only one person, Peter Thompson, a 17-year-old white youth, was ever tried for the killing, although reports indicated that a second associate had also pursued Duggal. Thompson was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1993.
The Metropolitan Police initially described the killing as motiveless, but the Crown Prosecution Service named racism as a motive during the trial. According to an activist from the Greenwich Action Committee Against Racist Attacks, gang members repeatedly shouted a racial slur as Duggal fled, and during the trial the defendant had to be instructed to stop using the same term to refer to Duggal. Duggal's memorial service was reportedly interrupted by neo-Nazis. Although Thompson was not known to be a member of the British National Party (BNP), he was found to be carrying BNP leaflets at the time of his arrest.
Duggal's murder was one of a number of racially motivated attacks and murders of Black and Asian people in south-east London during this period, which sparked public outrage and protests against the BNP. Stephen Lawrence, an 18-year-old, was stabbed to death by a gang in a racially motivated attack in 1993, also on Well Hall Road, approximately 200 yards from where Duggal was killed. Peter Thompson was alleged to have ties to a gang run by Neil and Jamie Acourt, who were among those later accused in the Lawrence case. Duggal's murder was also compared to the 1991 killing of 15-year-old Rolan Adams in Thamesmead, with all three cases cited by the Anti-Racist Alliance and other anti-BNP protesters.
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