The assistant commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police, who, along with his team, shot dead British terror convict Usman Khan recently, has an Indian connection.
Scotland Yard's Head of Counter Terrorism Policing Assistant Commissioner, Basu can trace his roots back to Kolkata, from where his father Pankaj Kumar Basu hailed. His father relocated to the UK in 1961 and married a Welsh nurse.
According to a report by The Print, His father had been a surgeon with the UK police for 40 years.
Neil Basu graduated from Nottingham University with a major in Economics and then took up a job with Barclays Bank. Joining the Metropolitan Police at 24, he was soon promoted to the rank of a Sergeant in the Brixton area.
Basu is the third person from the top at Scotland Yard, after the commissioner and deputy commissioner. He is also the first Asian-origin officer to be appointed to the job.
His job essentially is to keep the United Kingdom safe. But Basu and his family has, in the past faced discrimination from the same people.
According to an earlier report by The Telegraph, Basu said, "My parents were a mixed race couple so holding hands in the streets of north Wales they would be stoned by members of the community."
As The Print reports, during one of his addresses to Members of Parliament on the Home Affairs Select Committee earlier this year, Basu said that he had dealt with racism his entire life.
“I’ve spent 51 years dealing with racism and the vast amount of racism I’ve had in my life has been the perception that I might be Muslim – and I’m not,” he said, responding to a controversial proposal from a cross-party group of MPs, which had defined Islamophobia as a “type of racism”.
“So, I look at that and I feel kind of personally conflicted about saying I can’t accept this definition, but professionally, for me, it’s about community confidence," he had added.
Two people were stabbed to death and three others injured in a "terrorist" attack at London Bridge on Friday. The attack was carried out by a terror convict out on parole.
Identified as 28-year-old, Usman Khan was convicted in 2012 and released from prison in December 2018 on licence. Khan had been living in the Staffordshire area of central England, the police said, where searches are still being carried out in connection to the attack.
Khan had been convicted over a plot to bomb the London Stock Exchange and build a terrorist training camp on land owned by his family in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
Khan had also discussed staging a Mumbai-style attack on the UK Parliament and described by the judge who sentenced him for terrorism offences in 2012 as an ongoing risk to the public with a "serious, long term venture in terrorism".
Later, after the attack the Islamic State terror group claimed responsibility.
The group via its propaganda Amaq news agency said on Saturday that the attack was carried out by "a fighter from the Islamic State", according to the Site Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist activities.
"The person who carried out the London attack... was a fighter from the Islamic State, and did so in response to calls to target citizens of coalition countries," the IS statement read.
However, it did not provide any evidence to support its claim.
(With inputs from agencies)
