Equality and Human Rights Commission

The Commission strongly welcomes this conviction. I imagine all Scots , certainly those who saw the CCTV coverage of this despicable crime, will feel ashamed that such a thing could happen in modern Scotland. Mercifully incidents like this are very rare but they highlight that we can not be at all complacent in the fight against racism. We have to send out the strongest message, from education campaigns in our classrooms to sentences in our courtrooms: racism and racist hate crime will not be tolerated.

As well as challenging attitudes, it is clear we have to also challenge behaviour. It is astonishing that currently Britain has no national programme which attempts to deal with offenders' prejudice. That is why the Commission has instigated an international study, looking at how other countries tackle such issues.  We anticipate that the findings from the study will present clear strategies in how to tackle offenders' behaviour so that in future other communities, other families will not have to suffer in the way that Kunal Mohanty's have.

Ros Micklem
Scotland National Director