Case against British Indian woman for Hindu prayers on beach collapses

BRIGHTON: An Indian-origin woman and her husband are celebrating after charges that would have criminalised her Hindu prayers on the beach were thrown out of court.

Sheila Jacklin (61), a British Telugu designer born to parents from Andhra Pradesh, was charged with harassment for chanting Sanskrit mantras and performing mudra gestures on the beach near her home in Normans Bay, a remote hamlet near Brighton, after neighbours who bought a second home next to them in 2013 said the gestures were offensive and made around 100 complaints to police.

Sheila’s husband Nigel Jacklin (62), a statistician, was charged with assault and harassment. A three-day trial was scheduled to start on Tuesday at Brighton magistrates’ court.

However, on the first day the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) applied to get the case adjourned. This was refused by the magistrates. The prosecution then offered no evidence and the trial collapsed. The couple were told by the magistrates they were "free to go."

It was the second time a harassment case against Sheila over her Hindu prayers on the beach had reached court. The trial had collapsed the first time in 2019 too. On both occasions complaints were made by Stephane Duckett and his American partner Norinne Betjemann, who converted a workshop next to the Jacklins in 2014.

The couple were charged this time with pursuing a course of conduct amounting to harassment against Betjemann by staring into her property, loitering, and intimidating behaviour which caused distress. They both denied all the charges against them.

“I have been praying on the beach all over the world since the 1980s. I am a hippy. I am not interested in looking at my neighbour’s house,” Sheila told TOI outside court.

She said she had been doing Hindu prayers on the beach for 22 years before the couple moved next door, pointing out there was no temple nearby and it was common to do Hindu prayers in the open air. She said it was important to practice in the same “ashram”. “To conflate one of the many mudras with an offensive gesture is a serious insult to Hinduism,” she said, referring to one complaint that her Aakash mudra was an “offensive” V-sign.

“I should have the right to practise my religion freely in the UK. The idea I was going to be taken to court for harassment for praying is absurd,” she said.

Nigel added: “We feel this is racist and Hinduphobic.”

A CPS spokesperson said: “We requested an adjournment in this case in order to discharge our disclosure obligations following late submissions by the defence. Unfortunately, this request was refused by the court and we were regrettably left with no option but to offer no evidence.”

However Nigel said the defence submissions were submitted on time and were not late.

A Sussex Police spokesperson said they “conducted a thorough, impartial investigation into multiple reports of harassment, and one reported assault”. It said “enquiries were conducted without prejudice” and both suspects were interviewed. “Evidence was submitted to the CPS, which approved charges of harassment and assault by battery, before no evidence was offered after magistrates declined a request for adjournment from the CPS,”Sussex police said, adding it would continue to do all it could “to protect our communities and secure justice for victims of crime”.