BHIM KOHLI: Daughter calls for tougher sentences a year on from Leicester pensioner death
Susan Kohli believes that the guidelines in place for sentencing youngsters is too restrictive
Last updated 2nd Sep 2025
The daughter of an 80-year-old man who died after being attacked by a teenager in a Leicester park is campaigning for tougher punishments of children who commit serious crimes.
Bhim Kohli, 80, was punched and kicked, slapped in the face with a shoe, and racially abused in an attack in Franklin Park, Braunstone Town, near Leicester, on 1 September last year, and he died the next day.
2 children were sentenced for his manslaughter.
A 15 year old boy is serving seven years' detention for the attack, while a 13 year old girl was handed a three-year youth rehabilitation order for encouraging the act by filming and laughing.
Read more about the sentencing of the teenagers.
Susan Kohli shared with us how she feels their age should not be a factor and that the sentence should reflect the severity of the crime:
"The main challenge I've set for myself is ensuring that we get justice, but we do feel - as a family - let down, by the law and the justice system, in regards to young children conducting themselves in the way that they did with my dad.
"I don't think it's right. Just because they're children, they're treated differently but they've chosen to carry out those actions, and it's taken somebody's life.
"When do we get the chance to grieve? to get on with our lives? When they've given us a life sentence."
Susan is now campaigning to see what guidelines, if any, can be changed. Alongside this she feels that parents should be held accountable too:
"We need change. Some young children are conducting themselves in a way that shows no respect for life, no respect for anyone.
"I think in some situations parents should be held accountable for the child's actions, how does that look in law? we don't know yet but we need to consider it.
"Have parents been responsible; in terms of knowing what their children are doing? have they taken action when inappropriate behaviour was picked up on? or do they leave it and not address the concern which could develop into worse behaviours?
"Nothing is going to change what I can get for my father, because that is now done. Even if we were to get changes set in place, that's not going to change the sentencing for what they did to my dad - but it will change it for the future."
Well following the trail, and sentencing earlier this year, the teenage boy's seven years' custody was contested by the Solicitor General, Lucy Rigby, who referred the sentence to the Court of Appeal under the unduly lenient sentence scheme. Local MPs also called for this.
Though at the hearing last month, Lady Justice Macur, sitting alongside Mrs Justice Cutts and Mr Justice Murray, ruled that it was neither unduly lenient nor manifestly excessive.
She said: "We consider that the judge conscientiously executed the necessary sentencing exercise and conveyed his remarks to offender and co-defendant with great skill.
"We do not find that the sentence was unduly lenient."
Of the attempt to reduce the sentence, she said: "The sentence was a very significant sentence and necessarily so.
"It is entirely warranted by the seriousness of the offence. It is unarguable that the sentence was manifestly excessive."
Read more about the hearing at the Court of Appeal.
There was an outcry from the local community after Mr Kohli's death, with flowers being left at the park and people coming together.
It's hoped that with a vigil tonight, on the anniversary of Bhim's death, that will be the case again, giving people who knew him time to reflect on the last year and grieve his passing.