Picture of innocence: Five-year-old April Jones

Child murder most foul

Child murders are all too common in Britain. For the abduction, sexual abuse and murder of a five-year-old girl, April Jones, a 47-year-old man in Wales, Mark Bridger, a former abattoir worker, was last week sentenced to prison for life.

With good behaviour, someone convicted of murder can be released, typically, on parole after 15 years. But Bridger’s crime has been judged so heinous that he will remain locked up for the rest of his life.

Before 1965, when capital punishment was abolished in Britain, Bridger would almost certainly have gone to the gallows.

At the end of a five-week trial, the judge, Mr Justice Griffith Williams, concluded: “I sentence you to life imprisonment with a whole life order.”

Bridger becomes the 48th person in Britain to receive a “whole life order”. For him there will be no redemption, even if he reveals what he did with April’s body.

April’s father, Paul, and mother, Coral — who blames herself for letting her daughter, who suffered from cerebral palsy, go out to play in the evening — endured listening to grim forensic evidence.

Traces of April’s DNA, blood and skull fragments were found in Bridger’s cottage in Ceinws, mid-Wales, where he lived alone, having previously fathered six children by four women. He had been dumped by SMS by his latest girlfriend on the day he abused and killed April after abducting her from the nearby village of Machynlleth and forcing her into his Land Rover while she was out cycling with a friend.

Since India follows English law in many respects, the question of abolition of the death penalty — for example, for terrorism, child murder or aggravated rape (as in the Delhi case) — will eventually have to be debated by Indian society as a whole.

Mr Justice Griffith Williams told Bridger: “Schedule 21 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 provides that if the court considers the seriousness of the offence is exceptionally high, the appropriate starting point should be a whole life order and that category (would) include the murder of a child which involves the abduction of the child or sexual or sadistic motivation.”

“There is no doubt in my mind that you are a paedophile who has for some time harboured sexual and morbid fantasies about young girls, storing on your laptop not only images of pre-pubescent and pubescent girls, but foul pornography of the gross sexual abuse of young children,” he said. “All the indications are that you burnt at least a part of her in the wood burner... I have no doubt there can be only one sentence.”

Bolly nights

Amitabh Bachchan may not like the word “Bollywood”, but it sells tickets.

Good cause: Starry nights in London

Thus, singer Muhammed Fahad, accompanied by London girl Reema Chawda, are promising an evening of Bollywood Music on June 15 at the Beck Theatre in Middlesex, west London.

Accompanied by an orchestra, they “will recreate the Bollywood magic of legends like Mohammed Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar, Mukesh and Asha Bhosle, to the tune of a live orchestra”.

Tickets are £20 to £30 and the concert is in a good cause.

Puja Ramprakash (wife of cricketing legend Mark Ramprakash), who is doing the PR, says: “All proceeds from the evening will be donated to World Child Cancer.”

According to the charity, 2,00,000 children develop cancer each year, mostly in developing countries where their chances of survival are slim.

World Child Cancer was established in 2007 by a man called Geoff Thaxter, then director of services for CLIC Sargent, the UK’s largest children’s cancer charity. He had lost his own daughter Lisa to cancer some years previously.

Sadly, Geoff died in August 2008 but Gill is carrying his torch: “So much more could be done for these children at relatively little cost. I’m delighted to be a patron of World Child Cancer and to continue the work of the charity that my husband, Geoff, founded.”

Virgin birth

Aarathi Prasad, who describes herself as a “biologist and science writer”, appears to be developing into more of a science fiction author with increasingly outlandish but headline grabbing ideas.

Her first book, Like a Virgin: How Science is Redesigning the Rules of Sex, predicts women will be able to have babies in future without the involvement of men. Last week, she claimed women will be able to avoid the menopause and have babies into their fifties.

“Scientists are working on artificial wombs that could change the future of parenting,” she says. “It could mean for the first time that gay parents will be able to create a child that is genetically theirs.”

Next: (genetically engineered) pigs that fly.

Memories in london: Rituparno Ghosh (left) with Sangeeta Datta in 2011

Goodbye Ritu

Rituparno Ghosh was no stranger to London, where he had many admirers. When I asked to photograph him at the end of an interview many years ago, his reaction amused me.

“Ei dik theke nao (take the picture from this side),” he said, presenting his preferred profile.

Chokher Bali I saw in Mini Jaya in north Calcutta. He was in the UK in July 2011 when Noukadubi was shown at the London Film Festival. Other highlights were the premieres of Memories in March and Arekti Premer Golpo, with Rituparno participating in Q&As about the films that explore gay and transgender experiences.

The Q&As were done by his friend, Sangeeta Datta, who left Calcutta only last week and returned home to London just days before Rituparno died suddenly last Thursday morning.

He had been getting very tired at the end of a day’s shoot, said Sangeeta, but was keeping the doctor at bay. There was nothing to indicate the end was nigh.

When a Tagore bust was unveiled in London in Gordon Square on July 7, 2011, it was Sangeeta who brought him to the function where Prince Charles had done the honours. It took me a second to place Rituparno who was wearing his new more androgynous look.

He was probably joking but I heard he had not been entirely convinced by the look given to Tagore in the bust by sculptor Shenda Amery: “Akdom Lenin kore diyechhe (He looks like Lenin).”

Post Cannes, when Bengali cinema seems to be on the up, it has tragically lost one of its brightest stars.

Lesbian love

Cannes crown: Kechiche with Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos (right)

One suspects that Rituparno Ghosh would have loved the French film about lesbian love, Blue is the Warmest Colour, which won the Palme d’Or in Cannes last Sunday. Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche, a Frenchman of Tunisian origin, it has actresses Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos acting as though they were not acting. A theatre critic I know would call their performances “cinematic Viagra”.

Indians who want to catch the film should fly to London where they will find thousands of their countrymen on holiday.

Tittle tattle

The goody bag given by the Indian ministry of culture at the India-France dinner in Cannes contained a lovely gift — a copy of the first draft manuscript of Tagore’s Gitanjali.

It carries an inscription by Sir William Rothenstein: “Original manuscript of Gitanjali, which the poet brought me from India on his initial visit to Oak Hill Park.”