Cop in Rishi case now also on murder charges

The policeman who is facing trial over the shooting last year that killed 17-year-old Rishi Chandrikasingh, will now also be tried for murder. The Prosecutor’s Office OM announced today that it though is adding the additional charge to the officer’s jacket, it would not seek a verdict for the murder charges. The murder charges were added on top the manslaughter indictment to appease the boy’s family, the OM said. Rishi died in November last year when a policeman fired a shot at him at Hollands Spoor train station in The Hague. Three police officers –one in plain clothes- had reacted to a call, reportedly about a man who was brandishing a gun at the train station. Upon encountering Rishi -who fit the description they had received- the officers instructed him to freeze and put up his hands, but when Rishi refused, he was shot in the neck. The policeman said later he had intended to hit Rishi in his leg. It turned out later that the boy did not have a weapon and video footage showed that the plainclothes policeman fired the shot while he was running toward Rishi, which was considered an unnecessary risk. In a near-unprecedented show of sympathy with the family, police paid for Rishi’s funeral and said that the policeman would face trial over the questionable shooting. The boy’s family feared however that the policeman could still escape fitting punishment because the ‘manslaughter, culpable homicide and causing death by negligence’ indictments were “too light”. The trial will start on Monday. The hearings will be public but the policeman’s identity will not be revealed.