A man who told a 'pack of lies' to help his friend escape from police, after the friend chopped a woman to death, was jailed for two years and eight months yesterday on a charge of assisting an offender. In passing sentence, Mr Justice Michael Lunn, sitting in the Court of First Instance, said Jagjit Singh, 25, knew his friend had butchered Gule Almar, 41, on August 6, 2002. Harman Preet, 19, was jailed on April 22 for life and ordered to serve a minimum of 25 years after a jury found him guilty of the murder in Chungking Mansions. Mr Justice Lunn said Singh tried to distract investigators' attention by pointing the finger of blame at a Bangladeshi guest who had stayed at the New Mandarin Guesthouse where Singh and Preet stayed. Singh failed to tell police that Preet had left the building before their arrival, he noted. Preet was caught a day later when he returned to Chungking Mansions. Singh's story unravelled when police examined closed-circuit tapes of the building's lifts. 'From [Preet's] oral responses that you heard through the door and your subsequent observations to the cuts to his hand, and from all the circumstances known to you, you knew [Preet] to be the murderer when police had been summoned, [and then allowed] Preet to slip off in the early August morning,' Mr Justice Lunn said. 'In consequence of the account you gave to police, rather then embarking on a search for Harman Preet, the police wasted their time in going off to the Hong Kong International Airport looking for [another Bangladeshi guest].' The court heard the friends came to know Almar, and her younger Indian female companion, Jaswinder Kaur, after they checked into the same guesthouse. The court was told Ms Kaur told Singh and Preet that Almar had lured her to Hong Kong with the promise of a job, but had instead confiscated her passport and forced her to work as a prostitute. Shortly before midnight on August 5, Preet and Almar retired to her room while Ms Kaur spent the night with Singh in his room. It was after 3am that Singh and Ms Kaur heard Almar screaming. When Preet unlocked the door, Singh saw Almar's battered body on the floor. '[Despite] your much repeated assertions that you were telling the truth, in fact you told them a pack of lies.'
