The Eastern Finland Court of Appeal has increased the prison sentence of a British man convicted of attempting to murder a Finnish woman in Joensuu after travelling from Britain and monitoring her movements for several days.
Satinder Minhas, 32, received a sentence of six and a half years, one year longer than the term imposed by North Karelia District Court in January. The appeal court also increased the compensation payable to the victim.
The ruling is not final and an application for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court remains possible.
Minhas and the woman had met online but had never met in person before he travelled to Finland in January 2025.
The woman told him in early 2024 that she wanted them to remain friends. She later told him that she was in a relationship.
According to the courts, Minhas travelled to Joensuu, rented a vehicle and monitored the woman for about five days. Police concluded that revenge linked to her rejection of him motivated his actions.
On the day of the attack, Minhas approached the woman while she was returning home from a grocery shop and ordered her into his rental vehicle. He told her that he had a knife.
She ran away. Minhas then made three attempts to hit her with the vehicle, according to the court. She avoided the car and entered another vehicle to seek protection.
Minhas rammed the other vehicle before continuing the pursuit. He later chased the woman while carrying a hammer.
Members of the public intervened and restrained him until police arrived. Officers found a knife on him and discovered two ropes, cable ties and a chainsaw in his rental vehicle. He had bought the equipment in Joensuu.
STT reported from the appeal court ruling that Minhas had also planned to decapitate the woman. The court found that his intended method of killing would have met the legal threshold of particular brutality and cruelty.
Minhas told the Court of Appeal that he would not have been capable of killing the woman and described his thoughts about doing so as a fantasy.
The court rejected that account. It found that he had taken concrete steps to carry out a plan by locating the woman, travelling from his home country to Finland and obtaining equipment suited to the intended crime.
“There had been a persistent effort to carry out a plan made in advance,” the court said in its ruling, according to STT.
The appeal court found no reasonable doubt that Minhas intended to kill the woman. It described the motive as revenge associated with jealousy and considered the offence planned to an unusual degree.
A psychiatric assessment conducted during the district court proceedings found that Minhas had substantially reduced capacity to control his behaviour because of a serious mental disorder. The courts therefore considered him to have diminished criminal responsibility.
The Court of Appeal upheld that finding but concluded that the underlying sentence before the reduction should have been eight years rather than seven. It said Minhas remained capable of understanding the nature of his actions and that they were unlawful.
After applying the reduction for diminished responsibility, the court imposed the six-and-a-half-year prison term.
The convictions also included two counts of attempted assault and aggravated endangerment of traffic safety.
HT
