Remembering Harshita on her birthday

Harshita Brella would have been a quarter of a century old today. For the entirety of her cruelly small slice of life the Brella family would perform loving rituals on the 25th of December. In New Delhi, they’d wake up at dawn’s break to visit the local temple. Harshita’s favourite chocolate cake was ordered and her favourite foods were cooked at home. Paneer was the dish that Harshita looked forward to eating the most. In a day of favourites it was Harshita who was most treasured. Sonia Dabas, Harshita’s sister, tells us “We didn’t make any decisions about our own lives without consulting each other. We shopped together. We shared meals from the same plate. We were together 24/7. We are incomplete without each other.”

It’s been forty-one days since Harshita Brella’s body was found inside the boot of a car in Ilford in East London. Grief is a journey of never-ending ‘firsts’ and today her family will, for the first time, make the birthday-temple journey without their girl. Sonia says they’ll give prasad (the offering of food to religious deities) and then distribute food and clothes to those in need. This act of donation on auspicious occasions – known as anna daan – is common in India. It’s a chance for people to give to the community and share joy.

There was another recent occasion on which the family performed anna daan  – as part of Harshita’s death rituals. The act of donation is believed to honour the departed soul. On Harshita’s birthday the family will be forced to ruminate on her murder – a tragic and merciless paradox.

Sonia says her sister was highly ambitious. Harshita wanted to become a teacher and would often tell her family that she’d make a great success of her career in Great Britain. She moved to England with her husband Pankaj Lamba in April of this year. The couple had an arranged-marriage in New Delhi in the summer of 2023.

In the wedding photographs, Harshita’s presence commands attention. The traditional, bright-red Indian attire, stylish gold jewellery and flower garlands do not overwhelm her being, rather she seems to direct her own destiny from within the folds of marital finery. We now know that Harshita’s life aspirations were slowly wrested from her within months of arriving in England.

Last month, Channel 4 News revealed that Ms Brella sent a series of WhatsApp messages in distress in the months before police suspect she was murdered by her husband. The messages from July are between the suspect and Ms Brella. He threatens her: “If you really have the courage, then try and talk back to me and see what happens.”

Ms Brella also disclosed in messages to her family that she was the victim of financial abuse and that her bank account had been drained “by him”, adding: “He hasn’t even left £1.”

She texts her sister, Sonia, saying: “Why have I come here? Look what’s happening to me. From now on, I have to live in hiding.”

In September this year, Northamptonshire Police served a domestic violence prevention order against Pankaj Lamba to keep Ms Brella safe. It stops a perpetrator of abuse from contacting or coming near the person. The orders last between fourteen and twenty-eight days. Harshita’s DVPO ended at the beginning of October and Mr Lamba was asked to pay the costs of the order (£481) to Northamptonshire Police.

Harshita’s family last spoke to her by phone on the tenth of November before her phone was suddenly switched off. They alerted the police, concerned for her welfare, on the thirteenth of November, believing “something was wrong.” Ms Brella’s body was discovered in Ilford the next day. Police released CCTV images of the car they believe Mr Lamba used to transport Ms Brella’s body on the 100-mile journey from Corby to Ilford. Northamptonshire Police has referred itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct because of previous contact with Ms Brella.

The photographs that Sonia has shared with us are snapshots of a life that appears to hold family at its very heart. In one picture, Harshita is with her nephew, holding him up to the skies in Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh, the hometown of the spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. The tagline reads: travelling in the company of those we love is home in motion.

In another holiday photo Harshita is clearly moving, walking away from her sister and nephew, her hand stretched back towards them. The tagline says: these people are my love and my world.

Today, Harshita Brella would have been twenty-five years old. Sonia tells us “She always found happiness in other people’s happiness. She would be excited about the smallest things. She lived every moment to the fullest.”