THE parents of a Channel Islander murdered while travelling in India have spoken of their continued determination to establish the truth about what happened to their daughter.
Coinciding with the 12th anniversary of the death of Guernsey woman Sarah Groves in Kashmir on 6 April 2013, Vic and Kate Groves issued a statement paying tribute to someone they said “shone too brightly to ever be forgotten”.
Ms Groves left Guernsey in 2012 to go travelling, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro before making her way to India. She met a man who would become her boyfriend and he invited her to stay with him on a houseboat his family owned in Kashmir.
The houseboat was the scene of the horrific murder, after which Dutch national Richard de Wit was apprehended when fleeing the scene and later charged with the crime.
However the case has never been resolved, with years of delay in bringing the accused man to trial and then, in July 2021, the indefinite suspension of the trial as a result of Mr de Wit being deemed mentally unfit for it to be continued. The Dutchman remains in a Kashmiri jail as an “under-trial prisoner” and is reported to be refusing all medication.
Mr Groves said: “We continue in our endeavours to establish what happened that terrible night, but our efforts remain thwarted at every turn.
“The Guernsey inquest into her death remains open and we are no nearer to understanding what happened than we were twelve years ago.”
The grieving father added: “Our love for Sarah remains as deep as ever but we have found that what does change is that we miss her more and more as time goes by – she remains very much in our memory and that of her many friends.
“Sarah was an exceptional human being in anybody’s book, she shone too brightly to ever be forgotten.
Mr Groves described the change of government in the UK in July 2024 as a “major setback” due to the time spent by the family building contacts with the previous administration.
“Sadly, without greater help from key third parties such as the Foreign Office in London and the British High Commission in New Delhi, our chances of establishing the truth diminish with each passing year,” he said. “However, our determination does not.”
