37 years after British diplomat Percy Norris was shot dead in Mumbai, family still seeking answers

The family of a high-profile British diplomat who was assassinated in Mumbai 37 years in the past has mentioned it can “welcome” a reinvestigation of the case by British and Indian authorities. Madeleine and Martin Norris, youngsters of slain Deputy High Commissioner Percy Norris, insist that the case has not been investigated completely.

“We would very much welcome a proper investigation into the assassination,” Madeleine Norris instructed The Puucho in response to a query.

She had accompanied her dad and mom Angela and Percy to Mumbai, the place her father was appointed Deputy High Commissioner of the United Kingdom in October 1984. The project in Mumbai was essential, because the Margaret Thatcher Government wished to succeed in out to the brand new era of Indian entrepreneurs and improve bilateral commerce.

Born to a carpenter father and seamstress mom, Percy Norris was a self-made skilled. Former Mumbai Police Commissioner Julio Ribeiro remembers him for his enthusiasm.

“He did not fit the usually formal image of the British officials that we had. He was very lively and social,” recounted Mr. Ribeiro, one of many few officers who got here into contact with Norris throughout his fateful keep in Mumbai.

According to family information, Percy Leonard Norris started his profession in Solomon Islands throughout 1956-58 and served in numerous postings, together with in Malaysia and Dubai, earlier than being posted to move the Deputy High Commission in Mumbai.

His appointment coincided with the go to of the English cricket crew, which had continued with the Test sequence regardless of the overall deterioration of regulation and order in the backdrop of the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the anti-Sikh riots that adopted in the primary week of November.

On the evening of 27 November, the Norrises hosted a celebration for the visiting cricket crew. Apart from Mr. Ribeiro, the occasion was attended by Sunil Gavaskar, the then Home Secretary of Maharashtra R.D. Pradhan and the whole English cricket crew led by David Gower and vice-captain Mike Gatting.

Cricketer Pat Pocock is amongst those that wrote in regards to the full of life night they spent with Norris. One of the primary matters of dialogue was the match to be performed at Wankhede stadium the following day.

The subsequent morning, Ms. Madeleine Morris noticed her father depart for his workplace at 8 a.m., and that was the final time she noticed him alive. As the Deputy High Commissioner’s automobile neared Flora Fountain, rush-hour site visitors slowed down the automobile. That was when two bike-borne shooters got here shut and shot Percy Norris dead.

The clinically executed operation was claimed by an obscure outfit referred to as Revolutionary Organisation of Muslim Socialists. Interestingly, the organisation was in the information when (*37*) Whitty, Cultural Attaché of the British Embassy in Athens, was murdered earlier that yr. It is believed that this outfit labored as a entrance for Abu Nidal Organisation, which was a part of the identical worldwide community that included the Irish Revolutionary Army.

The traumatic incident forged a shadow on the Norris family, which stays in the darkish about what prompted the killing. The violent loss of life of Norris was condemned by the very best officers of the United Kingdom and India however the Norris family didn’t obtain passable answers to its questions.

Quite a lot of individuals expressed suspicion in regards to the method of the loss of life. Mr. Ribeiro, in his autobiography, mentioned, “We got the feeling that there were facts that the British government was not going to disclose to us, and we respected their silence.”

Mr. Martin Norris, nevertheless, believes that after the regimes in Libya and Iraq had been overthrown, there may be new details about how terrorist teams operated in the Seventies and the Eighties, supported by the governments, and desires a renewed investigation into the case, saying “One key issue is that, since 1985, my sister and I have heard nothing further on the matter at all. Unlike other terrorism-related cases, to the best of our knowledge, nothing more in the way of investigation has ever been pursued.”

The assassination of Norris is a tragic landmark, as it’s the solely such incident involving a British diplomat after India attained Independence in 1947.

Mr. Ribeiro, who met the late Mrs. Norris in London years later, recollected that even she had sought answers to the unsolved case.