A Briton was sentenced to a minimum of 18 years in prison for the “racially aggravated” murder of Indian Navy officer Kunal Mohanty by a court in London.

Christopher Miller, 25, had knifed 30-year-old Mohanty in the neck as he walked to a restaurant with his friends in Glasgow in March this year.

Miller claimed in court that the incident was ‘botched mugging’ but a jury at the High Court in Glasgow returned a unanimous verdict of murder. The judge said the killing was as “incomprehensible as it was evil”.

During the trial at the High Court in Glasgow prosecutors said the seaman was attacked because of his skin colour. Mohanty, who was due to become a father for the first time, was in Glasgow to sit his captain’s exams at the city’s Nautical College.

The court was told that he was left bleeding to death from an 18-cm long hole in his neck. A doctor described Mohanty’s neck injury as “one of the worst he had ever seen”.

Prosecuting lawyer Dorothy Bain said it was “an atrocity delivered without mercy, a death blow” and an unprovoked attack on a blameless, defenceless and wholly decent man because Christopher Miller didn’t like the colour of his skin.

As Mohanty lay dying in the street with blood gushing from his neck, Miller and his friend John McGrory, 20, were seen on CCTV running through a car park celebrating. Miller’s brother Jamie Miller, 17, gave evidence during the trial and said Miller told him he had “done a Paki“.

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