It was a crime that shocked and puzzled even hardened detectives: a DPD driver hacked to death in a cartel-style execution as he delivered parcels in the middle of the afternoon in a quiet suburban street.
Aurman Singh, 23, was ambushed in broad daylight by eight men armed with an axe, a hockey stick, a knife, a golf club and a shovel.
He was attacked with such ferocity that his left ear was severed and his skull had cracked open and part of his brain left exposed.
The brutal killing on August 21, 2023 was given an extra grim twist as it emerged that his last horrific moments were caught on the security cameras and doorbell cams of homes he was due to deliver to.
Nothing, however, had been stolen from either his person or his delivery van.
Two men – Mehakdeep Singh, 24, and Sehajpal Singh, 26, – were this week found guilty of Aurman’s murder following a three-week trial. Five other men have already been convicted and jailed.
But what has remained unclear is why he was targeted in such a savage, blood-thirsty assault.
In an attempt to answer that lingering question has looked into the background of those involved.
And today we can reveal that Aurman’s murder came at the end of months of simmering hostilities between groups of young men of Indian heritage that had on several occasions exploded into violence.
One linked event was a ‘crazy fight’ at a music event in a park a mile from Aurman’s home a month before he died.
A second was another huge fight which broke out at a kabaddi sports tournament in Derby the day before his murder between gun and machete-wielding gangs.
Detectives believe he was targeted due to a link with the latter event, which saw crowds flee in terror as gunshots rang out and masked thugs stabbed each other in a pre-arranged clash.
Aurman, born in Italy but understood to have been of Indian Sikh heritage, lived in a mid-terraced home with his 46-year-old mother and younger sister in Smethwick, West Midlands.
He attended the Sandwell and Birmingham Mela, a two-day festival promoting Punjabi culture, which took place between July 22ndand 23rd, 2023 in Victoria Park in Smethwick.
A former neighbour told how Aurman had been caught up in trouble at the event.
He said: ‘I heard he had been involved in an altercation at the festival shortly before he was killed.
‘I don’t know in what capacity, he may have just been present, but I was told there was a big fight between one group and another.
‘A few friends of mine who went to the Mela told me that there had been this “crazy fight” and people had been moved away from the area by security.
‘The kid I was talking to gestured over to Aurman’s house and said “your neighbour was involved, did you know that?”.
‘I had no idea but didn’t know what to think. He seemed to me to be a quiet man, but a good neighbour. Not someone who would cause any problems.
‘I saw Aurman parking his DPD delivery van the day after I was told he was involved in the fight. I didn’t know him well so I never asked him about it. I didn’t have that sort of relationship with him.
‘But a few weeks after being told that information about him I found out that he was the delivery driver killed on his round over in Shrewsbury.
‘Reading the details of what happened to him, the fact his killers ambushed him and with such ferocity, makes it look like some sort of revenge attack.’
A month on from his local Mela, Aurman travelled to Alvaston in Derby on August 20 to watch a tournament of kabaddi, a contact sport which originated in India and involves two teams of seven players attempting to ‘raid’ each other’s half.
But what should have been an enjoyable afternoon turned into chaos when two warring gangs fought a pitched battle.
One man was shot in the groin and others left with gruesome slash wounds, which saw seven men convicted of violent disorder last year.
It is not known exactly what role Aurman played in the trouble – if any – but he ended up paying for it with his life.
Derbyshire Police did not have him marked down as a suspect in any fighting but even so his killers are understood to have picked him out from footage, which was uploaded onto social media within hours.
At least two friends of Aurman’s killers had been hurt following the disturbances and were taken to hospital. One was attacked by a man brandishing a sword.
The following morning Aurman got up for work and drove 45-miles north from his home to his DPD depot in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.
As normal he loaded his van with packages and then started out on his round. But unbeknownst to him a colleague at the depot – Sukhmandeep Singh, 24 – had passed on details of his delivery route to his killers.
Mehakdeep Singh and Sehajpal Singh drove to Shrewsbury from their homes in Tipton, West Midlands, in a white Mercedes Benz. With them were Harpreet Singh and Harwinder Singh Turna, both of whom remain at large.
Four other men – Arshdeep Singh, 24, Jagdeep Singh, 23, Shivdeep Singh, 27, and Manjot Singh, 24 – followed in a grey Audi.
They carefully tailed Aurman through the historic Shropshire county town to a quiet suburban area in Coton Hill, where he pulled up just before 1pm and got out of his van to start unloading the packages.
The Mercedes parked up behind and Harwinder was the first out, charging at Aurman and his startled colleague with a metal bar.
The colleague ran off in terror and Harwinder hurled the bar at Aurman as he too tried to flee, the impact of which caused him to lose balance and tumble to the floor.
What happened next was a sickening frenzied attack which lasted just 35-seconds but left Aurman with zero chance of survival.
Circling around him – several clutching weapons – they moved in on their hapless victim, chopping him with an axe, stabbing him and beating him mercilessly with a hockey stick, shovel and golf club.
They left him in a bloodied heap in a side-road. Residents who found him called an ambulance but his injuries were too severe and he died at the scene.
Both the Mercedes and Audi drove off at speed.
During his trial at Stafford Crown Court, Sehajpal said an argument broke out during their getaway between his co-defendant Mehakdeep and Harwinder about the metal bar being thrown and his fingerprints being on it.
The suspects later abandoned their cars and dumped their weapons. Sehajpal and Mehakdeep then booked a cab to Shrewsbury rail station, where they met some of the others who had travelled there by bus.
They travelled as a group to Wolverhampton. When asked what the atmosphere was like during the journey, Sehajpal said: ‘It was stressed. We were also panicking.
‘There was not much talking between us.’
Sehajpal told jurors Mehakdeep booked an Uber to a friend’s flat in High Street, Tipton, for the both of them.
He recalled how he was at the flat when he discovered Aurman had died, adding: ‘My friend was using his mobile phone and then he saw a DPD driver was dead in Shrewsbury.
‘Then it came to my mind that it was the same case.
‘It was shocking and stressful because I thought, at the time when I was in Shrewsbury, I thought that Aurman had some serious injuries but when I got the news that he had died, it was shocking.
‘It was terrible news.’
The court heard how Harwinder boarded a flight to Delhi, India, on August 22 and has since disappeared. Harpreet is said to have withdrawn cash from various cashpoints before the trail to catch him likewise went cold.
Sehajpal and Mehakdeep, meanwhile, lay low for a couple of weeks before booking flights to Austria, where they were both arrested last May.
Footage released by West Mercia Police shows the moment they were caught during a sting by armed cops in the Austrian village of Hohenzell, about 44 miles north-east of Salzburg and 146 miles west of the capital of Vienna.
The pair denied Aurman’s murder but were found guilty by a jury on Tuesday. Their convictions follow that of Arshdeep Singh, Jagdeep Singh, Shivdeep Singh, and Manjot Singh, who were each jailed for 28 years for murder in April 2024.
Their inside man, Sukhmandeep Singh, was convicted of manslaughter and jailed for 10 years.
Speaking outside court on Tuesday, Detective Chief Inspector Mark Bellamy, of West Mercia Police said the attack was ‘violent and calculated’.
He added: ‘Sehjapal and Mekahdeep, along with six other men carried out this attack in broad daylight on a quiet Shropshire street with only one intention – to kill him.
They used inside information to get hold of Aurman’s delivery route, where they lay in wait for him, before using an arsenal of weapons against him knowing he was defenceless.
‘Sehjapal and Mekahdeep, knowing what they had done then fled the country in an attempt to avoid being put in front of the courts and facing the consequences of their actions.’
Aurman’s murder not only caused a wave of revulsion due to the brazen nature of his killers, it also cast a dark shadow over the lives of his mother and sister who moved out of their rented home within months of his death.
Their whereabouts is currently unknown but they are understood to have left the property fairly rapidly and without informing neighbours.
In a statement released via West Mercia Police, his mother admitted that she and her daughter have lost the will to live such is the pain they have both endured since his death.
She said: ‘There are no words that could ever explain the impact this tragedy has had on me and my family.
‘Today a mother will grow old without her son. A sister will grow up without her brother. We don’t want what has happened to us to happen to another family.
‘It is an unbearable loss for us which has changed our lives. My daughter and myself will be living our lives for the sake of it but our happiness and the will to live is not there.
‘We would like to thank the police for conducting their investigation diligently and supporting us through this tough time.’