A man who openly admitted to attempting to harm the late Queen Elizabeth II, after being discovered on the grounds of Windsor Castle wielding a loaded crossbow, was handed a nine-year prison sentence on Thursday.
Jaswant Singh Chail, 21, will begin his sentence in the high-security Broadmoor psychiatric hospital, transitioning to prison once his mental health permits.
During the sentencing at London’s Old Bailey court, Judge Nicholas Hilliard revealed that the former supermarket worker had “lost touch with reality so that he had become psychotic.”
On Christmas Day 2021, Chail broke into the queen’s residence and confessed to an armed officer at the scene that he was there “to kill the queen.” In a journal, he expressed his intention to target the “prince” if he couldn’t reach the monarch, referring to her son, the current King Charles III.
Chail pleaded guilty to three charges, including treason, at a previous hearing, making him the first person to admit to treason in the UK in decades. The last such case involved Marcus Sarjeant in 1981, who was sentenced to five years in prison for firing blank shots at the queen during a horseback parade in central London.
During the sentencing, it was revealed that Chail was influenced by the fantasy world of Star Wars and had prepared for the attack dressed as a Sith Lord, wearing an iron mask and carrying a loaded crossbow. He believed he was communicating with an angel via an AI chatbot and saw the attack as revenge for the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre of Indians by British colonial troops.
Chail shared his intent in a video with his phone contacts just before his arrest, and it later emerged that Queen Elizabeth had passed away peacefully nearly nine months later, on September 8, at the age of 96.
Chail’s intrusion into Windsor Castle occurred while the queen was spending Christmas Day there with Prince Charles and Camilla. He had scaled the perimeter of the grounds with a nylon rope ladder and was in the grounds for about two hours before being apprehended. The crossbow he carried was loaded and ready to fire.
It was also revealed that Chail had previously sought to join the Ministry of Defence Police and the Grenadier Guards in an attempt to get close to the royal family. In a video shared on Snapchat before entering the castle grounds, he apologized for his actions and declared his intent to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II, referencing the 1919 massacre in India.