What happened to my mother? Daughter's plea for answers after 45 years
What happened to Vidya Ginda?
That’s the question that has plagued her daughter Sareata for decades.
There has been a manslaughter conviction, claims of police brutality, altered witness statements and an uncovered skull.
But 45 years on Sareata still feels she has no idea what really happened to her mother.
Shocking discovery shone spotlight on case
The 31-year-old mother-of-four disappeared on Monday, October 29, 1973, from her Bristol Street home in Wolverhampton.
Number 9 Bristol Street, which also served as the family-run grocery store, was subsequently searched by detectives but nothing was found to arouse suspicion.
Despite appeals for information, including one in the Express & Star on Friday, November 2, Vidya was never found and the case went cold.
That was until four years later – October 1977 – when the discovery of an Asian woman’s skull in Smethwick by school children brought the case back under the spotlight.
However instead of providing the answers a heartbroken family so desperately craved, the skull, which subsequently turned out not to be Vidya’s, blew the Ginda family apart.
Riddle over witness statements
All of a sudden witness statements began to change and Vidya’s husband – Bhajan Ram Ginda – was accused of pushing his wife down the stairs, cracking her skull and killing her.
He was then said to have chopped her body up and skinned her and on October 30 1973, the day after her disappearance, Bhajan allegedly burnt her bones after binning the flesh.
One witness had originally told police he saw Vidya in a local market with another women on Wednesday, October 31.
However, after claiming he had been told to lie to the police by a relative of Bhajan, the witness changed his statement to say he did not see Vidya that day.
His statement changed on November 5, 1977 after a visit from a police officer.
The male relative of Bhajan, who worked at 9 Bristol Street, changed his statement twice.
On January 24, 1974, he said that Vidya and Bhajan got on fine.
However on November 7, 1977, he told police he had seen Vidya’s body in a kitchen cupboard with blood coming out of the right side of her head.
He claimed Bhajan had hit her and she had died.
Asked why he did not tell the police the ‘truth’ in the first place, the male relative said he was afraid of Bhajan.
He also added Bhajan had told him to tell the other witness to lie.
His statement later changed again a few days later when he says he didn’t see Vidya’s body but he did spend around two hours cutting up fresh meat, which he believed to be her.
It was the morning of November 8, 1977, when Bhajan was arrested outside 91 Roslea Drive, Glasgow, where he had subsequently moved after his wife’s disappearance, and the case got murkier still.
Bhajan, who had re-married after a psychic told him his wife was dead, originally proclaimed his innocence but after police interviews, he confessed to accidentally killing her.
His signed police statement said he had ‘panicked’ after Vidya fell down the stairs following a row and he decided to joint her out of fear that her family would blame him for what happened.
He was charged with murder, manslaughter and obstructing or preventing a coroner in the execution of his duty.
Allegations of foul play ahead of trial
But before the trial got under way Bhajan claimed foul play, saying he had been beaten in police interviews and was so scared he felt he had no choice but to tell them what they wanted to hear.
He claimed that while being questioned in Glasgow by officers from West Midlands Police he was struck in the face, pulled to the floor, had his head bashed on the floor and was punched and kicked continually in the private parts.
The following morning he says he was driven down to the former Birmingham Road police station in Wolverhampton and was threatened again by one officer who allegedly told him: “If you don’t tell us the truth you know what we will do, we will push you from a fast running car and we will make them think you tried to escape.”
The Police and Criminal Evidence Act, which instituted a legislative framework for the powers of police officers, only came into force in 1984.
West Midlands Police said it would be ‘inappropriate’ to comment on the case as it is currently under review by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
The trial at Stafford Crown Court, which got underway in November 1978, also cast more doubt over the fate of Vidya as the court heard there were inconsistencies in Bhajan’s story.
A pathologist said Vidya would not have suffered the injuries Bhajan described from the fall.
Lesley Walker, a chartered engineer who led the team that created the modern-day cremation furnace, said a fire of the nature described by Bhajan would not have been able to burn Vidya’s bones.
And finally a chemist who analysed soil from the back garden of 9 Bristol Street said he found nothing unusual to suggest bones or tissue had been burnt there.
Despite this, Bhajan was found guilty by a 10-2 majority verdict of manslaughter after being found not guilty of murder.
Deciding to immediately appeal, Bhajan was told legal aid would only be available if he appealed his sentence rather than conviction.
As a consequence his prison sentence was reduced from 12 years to seven on appeal, but his manslaughter conviction has never been challenged.
He returned to Glasgow after his release from prison and died on March 13, 2012.
In the eyes of the law this is a closed case. For Sareata it is anything but.
WATCH: Sareata revisits city home in appeal for answers
Video: Juliet Hounam
Sareata, who was just months old at the time of her mother's disappearance, told the Express & Star: “I am 100 per cent sure that what my father got convicted of he did not do.”
The 45-year-old, who was born in Wolverhampton, has given up her job as a lecturer at Middlesex University and left her London home to investigate her mother’s disappearance and is determined for answers.
She took the Express & Star back to where her parents lived at 9 Bristol Street, Merridale - proving an emotional moment in her bid to solve the disappearance.
"This is the house we lived in when I was born. And this is where my mother disappeared from. Either she left this house in the morning. Or she might have been killed in this house. I just don't know. She could even still be in this house," she said.
She revealed her hopes that forensic teams would be allow access to investigate inside - claiming police failed to make a full search of the family home at the time of the case.
Sareata added: "[Coming back here] I just feel afraid. Feeling afraid that something so awful could have happened here to my mother.
"I have been living all this time with this horrendous story that we have no evidence that it even happened. That's the thing that is probably the most upsetting."
She today issued a heartfelt appeal for anyone with any information to come forward.
Sareata said: “I would like anyone with any information, regardless of how insignificant they think it may be, to please come forward and tell me what they know.
"Even the smallest bits of information such as when the school holidays were that month or what day the bins were collected could be valuable to me.
“I just want closure and to discover what really happened to my mother.”
Working on her mother’s disappearance since the age of 18, in November 2016 Sareta submitted a file to the Criminal Cases Review Commission asking them to look again her mother’s case.
The commission has been reviewing the case for around 18 months, with a spokesman confirming to the Express & Star that the case has been under review since June 2017.
While the case is under review, Sareata is still carrying on with her own investigation in a desperate attempt to find out the truth.
She said: “Because it was so long ago people are getting old and dying. If I want to find out what happened to my mother it’s now or never.”
Anyone with any information about the disappearance of Vidya Ginda is asked to email jack.averty@expressandstar.co.uk or call 01902 319434. Information can be passed on anonymously.
