Why Indian widow, whose husband was falsely accused of 1997 Glasgow murder, plans to sue Scottish authorities

The widow of an Indian man who was falsely accused of the 1997 murder of a young woman in Glasgow is planning to sue the Scottish authorities. Twenty-eight years ago, Tracey Wylde was killed at her flat in Barmulloch, north-east Glasgow.

The life of Sougat Mukherjee turned upside down after he was labelled as a murder suspect in the case about 12 years ago. He passed away at the age of 44 in West Bengal in 2023, four years after the real killer was caught.

Now, Sougat's wife Sapna, a sales manager, has appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to back her bid to sue the Scottish authorities.

Here’s what happened.

The murder of Tracey Wylde

On November 23, 1997, Tracey Wylde, a sex worker, visited Glasgow city centre. The 21-year-old, who had a young daughter, was last seen on CCTV around 3.20 am the next morning in the city’s red-light area, as per The Guardian report.

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The next day, her friends found her body at her flat. There were marks and bruising around her neck as she was choked to death.

The initial two-and-a-half-year murder investigation did not result in any leads. A cold case review in 2013 was also not productive.

How Indian man became suspect in Tracey Wylde’s murder

When Wylde was killed in Glasgow in 1997, Sougat was studying at Glasgow Nautical College, which is now City of Glasgow College.

He had reached Scotland in the autumn of 1996. Sougat, who was 19 at the time, lived in student halls and worked part-time in grocery shops and restaurants, reported BBC Scotland.

He never created trouble but was himself a victim of crime when he was mugged by a gang near the college.

Around a year later, Sougat dropped out of college and returned to India. He believed his decision to fly home to Mumbai three months after Wylde’s murder led to him coming under the police scanner.

After returning to India, he married Sapna and started pursuing a new university course in Chennai, Tamil Nadu.

Sougat built a successful career in sales and business development. His work took him to several places abroad, including the United States, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Greece, as per BBC Scotland.

However, his life changed for the worse in October 2014 when local police informed him that he was a suspect in the unsolved murder case of Wylde in Glasgow.

Speaking to BBC Scotland in May 2019, Sougat recalled that the allegation “shocked me to the core.”

"My entire family were shattered."

In January 2015, the businessman was arrested and held in Mumbai Prison for three weeks.

He was branded a fugitive and named as a suspect. CCTV stills of a mystery man walking along the street with his arm around Wylde were published in the media.

"The first time I saw Tracey Wylde's photograph was when my mum and dad and my wife came down to meet me in prison. I had never seen that lady in my entire life,” Sougat was quoted as saying.

In the following weeks, he was thrown at the centre of a protracted extradition battle. As a suspect in a murder case, the father-of-three also could not find a job and had to rely on his parents and in-laws for money.

He recalled, "We had to leave the lease apartment where we were staying because everybody in society had seen the news and they did not want a murderer to stay inside the flat."

The entire tragic episode took a massive toll on Sougat's health.

Sapna, 45, told BBC Scotland that the accusation "broke him completely" and that her husband "slowly slipped away".

She said, "He felt he had become a burden on our family, as I was the sole earning member supporting three growing children and his medical expenses throughout those five devastating years.

"His parents exhausted every penny they had trying to save him physically and mentally from the tsunami of emotional trauma from a botched investigation."

Who was the real killer?

Wylde’s real killer was held for an alleged assault in the Cowcaddens area of Glasgow in 2018.

Zhi Min Chen had to give officers a DNA sample after he was taken into custody. It matched the forensic profile found in Wylde's flat more than two decades ago.

Chen, a 44-year-old father of two, had lived in Glasgow since the murder. He even went on to get married and establish a takeaway restaurant.

He admitted to killing Wylde in April 2019 and was later jailed for at least 20 years. The judge, Lord Arthurson, told him: "You committed a brutal, cowardly and murderous attack on a vulnerable young woman in her own home."

Chen appealed his sentence, which was later reduced to 16 years.

On May 1, 2019, Sougat was officially exonerated by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).

However, Sapna said at the time told BBC Scotland: "We went through hell.

"Things were really bad for the last five years because my husband was in a good position as far as work was concerned, but eventually things just crashed. Things just went from bad to worse.

"My children had to face a lot of problems because a lot of people didn't want to have any relationship with us because they were children of a murderer."

She said her husband had been left "broken" by the accusations. "We are still suffering and it is still not over for us. What has been done is not repairable," Sapna said then.

Sapna to sue Scottish authorities

Six years after her husband's name was cleared, Sapna has written to PM Modi to highlight the family's plight.

In the letter, seen by BBC Scotland News, she detailed how the ordeal took a heavy toll on the couple and their children, Sreshtha, now 21, Shlok, 18, and Shreya, 16.

She said, "I write to you today with a broken heart, an empty home, and an urgent plea for justice, not only for my family but for every Indian citizen who may be wrongly targeted in a foreign criminal investigation without adequate diplomatic protection."

Sapna revealed how her husband became dependent on alcohol and "descended into severe clinical depression, consumed by shame and hopelessness" after falsely being named as a murder suspect.

During this time, Sapna was the family's sole breadwinner. She wrote: "He died as he feared he would - having lost everything, through no fault of his own."

The widow questioned why her husband was exonerated four years after the accusations were levelled, even though his DNA sample had not matched the profile found at the crime scene.

She urged the Indian government to support the family's bid for financial compensation from the Scottish authorities.

Sapna also called on the MEA to lead a formal inquiry into how Sougat came to be named as a murder suspect.

"My husband was an innocent man," she said. "He committed no crime. He harmed no-one. He co-operated with authorities. He trusted the system.

"And the system killed him - slowly, painfully, and completely."

Sapna told BBC Scotland News her husband had suffered from severe clinical depression after being labelled as a murder suspect. He died in January 2023 from acute liver cirrhosis.

She said, "The world needs to know that an innocent man's life was completely and irreversibly destroyed, and that his family is still suffering the consequences today."

With inputs from agencies