A 15-year-old boy who killed a man in a Leicestershire park will have his sentence reviewed because it may have been too lenient.
The child, who cannot be named because of his age, was handed a term of seven years’ detention in June for the manslaughter of 80-year-old Bhim Kohli.
The Court of Appeal will review it under the unduly lenient sentence scheme.
A spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office said: “The Solicitor General, Lucy Rigby KC MP, was appalled by this violent, cowardly attack on an innocent man. She wishes to express her deepest sympathies to Bhim Kohli’s friends and family at this difficult time.
“After undertaking a detailed review of the case, the Solicitor General concluded the sentence of the 15-year-old boy could be referred to the Court of Appeal. The court will determine if the sentence is increased or not.”
A 13-year-old girl was spared a custodial sentence for the same offence. She was aged 12 at the time of the incident on 1 September last year and was given a three-year youth rehabilitation order.
It is believed the girl’s sentence will not be referred to the Court of Appeal as the threshold had not been met.
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Both children had denied their part in killing the elderly dog walker, who died in hospital the day after the attack.
But they were convicted in April by a jury of manslaughter, while the boy, who was aged 14 at the time of the killing, was cleared of murder.
Leicester Crown Court heard Mr Kohli was racially abused when the boy pushed, kicked and punched him, while the girl encouraged him by recording parts of the attack while laughing.
Mr Kohli was found lying on the ground in Franklin Park in Braunstone Town, near Leicester, and died the next evening of a spinal cord injury.
He had been following a familiar routine, walking his beloved dog Rocky to the local park, just yards away from his home. But when he arrived at the park, he was attacked.
The jury heard the girl had pointed Mr Kohli out to the boy, who then subjected the victim to a violent assault.
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High Court judge Mr Justice Turner called it a “cowardly and violent attack” on an elderly man who did “nothing to deserve” what happened to him.
He told the boy: “What you did was not one single attack which you immediately regretted, but two separate violent outbursts.”
The judge accepted that, while the girl had encouraged the boy’s behaviour, she did not know he would use “anything like the level of violence he did”.
After the sentencing, Mr Kohli’s family said they had “no sympathy” for his killers.
His daughter, Susan Kohli, who found her father lying on the ground following the attack, said it was hard to find forgiveness for the pair, regardless of their ages.
“Why should they be given grace for what they have done?” asked Ms Kohli. “They chose to attack a defenceless pensioner and for that I cannot give them any of my sympathy.”
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Ms Kohli said she was “angry and disappointed” that the teenagers’ sentence did not, in her view, reflect the severity of the crime.
“The death of my dad has left a hole in our family, a hole that can never be filled because of the actions of two teenagers on that Sunday evening last September,” she said.
“I believe on that day the two teenagers made a choice. The teenage boy chose to attack my dad and the girl chose to film him being attacked. They knew what they were doing.”
She added: “When they are released, they still have their full lives ahead of them. They can rebuild their lives. We can’t.”
