- When the hitman pulled out, Shumsheer Ghumman, 33, tried to carry out the murder plot himself
By Dan Newling
Stalker: Fund manager Shumsheer Ghumman has been sentenced to nine years in prison
A former City fund manager tried to arrange for a hitman to murder the father of a PR executive with whom he was infatuated, a court has heard.
Shumsheer Ghumman offered to pay a gangster £850 to kill Philip Rhind, a wealthy oil company executive, whom Ghumman saw as an obstacle to his desire.
But the ‘hitman’ pulled out of the deal, prompting Ghumman to try to complete the job himself by throwing Molotov cocktails at the Rhind family’s imposing sea-front villa in Cape Town.
The disgraced banker’s ‘brutal, cruel and cowardly’ plot was detailed during his trial in the city for fraud, incitement to commit murder, attempted murder and malicious injury to property.
Yesterday he was jailed for nine years.
The court heard how 33-year-old Ghumman, an India-born Australian citizen, developed an obsession with Hannah Rhind, 30, when she was working as a PR executive for the Roche pharmaceutical company in London.
After the y were introduced at a dinner party in 2009, Ghumman, who was then working for Japanese firm Daiwa Asset Management, bombarded Miss Rhind with emails, telephone calls and text messages.
She was polite and friendly as she batted off his unwanted advances, the court heard.
Even after two months of calls and emails, she included him among those of her Facebook contacts able to view details of a South African wine tasting event she planned to attend at Harrods.
But she was horrified when Ghumman was the only one of her Facebook ‘friends’ to turn up. Over the following months his harassment campaign intensified.
He became so obsessed that in October 2010 he was convicted of harassment at Westminster magistrates’ court.
Stalked: Ghumman developed an obsession with Hannah Rhind (pictured) when she was working as a PR executive in London
Four days after his conviction he sent an email to Hannah’s father Philip, whom he blamed for coming between himself and the object of his obsession, threatening that ‘whatever is done to me . . . will be repaid with interest’.
Three months later, in January 2011, Ghumman travelled to Cape Town where Mr Rhind lives with his wife Deborah.
On arrival, he posed as a freelance photo-journalist called Michael Kirkham and claimed to be researching an article on gangsters.
He trawled the city’s underworld to find someone prepared to kill Mr Rhind, using the ‘honeymoon hijacking’ murder of Anni Dewani to illustrate the type of cold-blooded killer he was looking for.
Targeted: Oil boss Philip Rhind and his daughter Hannah
Target: The Rhind family home in Cape Town, which was attacked by Mr Ghumman
‘I want to meet someone who has absolutely no compunction about behaving with appalling violence,’ Ghumman emailed an unwitting middleman.
‘The type of individuals who carjacked Anni and Shrien Dewani . . . would be ideal.’
Hannah Rhind was not in court, but outside her father described his ordeal as a ‘nightmare’. He said: ‘I absolutely believe that Mr Ghumman is a real threat, even now.’
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