Nottingham has a new top judge. Nirmal Shant KC, from Nottinghamshire, is due to take up the new role of Recorder of Nottingham, following the departure of Judge Gregory Dickinson who stood down in July. Legal Affairs Correspondent Rebecca Sherdley interviewed her
Judge Nirmal Shant KC was once advised that high street retail chain Woolworths was recruiting when she shared her dreams of becoming a lawyer with a careers advisor at school. But Judge Shant was resolute. She wanted to be a lawyer.
Now she due is be sworn in as the new Recorder of Nottingham - the highest appointed legal officer of the Crown within the Nottingham City and Nottinghamshire county. She has moved from her role as Honorary Recorder of Derby, a position she took up in 2016, which saw her dealing with the most high profile cases that have gone through the city's crown court over the past six years.
She was one of the first Asian Recorders (a part-time judge), and one of the first women QCs in the Midlands. She explains how her amazing career all began.
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She attended a comprehensive in Long Eaton, and recalls speaking to a careers advisor: "I wanted to be a lawyer and she said 'well, you do know that Woolworths are recruiting'. I said they may be but..you know. I have to say that wasn't very encouraging and I have met people since who have been very encouraging.
"Certainly at school; I went to a comprehensive school, and I think the impression was you wouldn't go very far wrong if you went to work at Woolworths, not that there's anything wrong with working for Woolworths! But that wasn't my ambition. It was the fact they were not prepared to acknowledge that you might have a different path for yourself".
She had an early interest in law. She was an avid viewer of a programme called Crown Court. Court cases were in the crown court of the fictional town of Fulchester (a name later adopted by Viz) and would typically be played out over three afternoons in 25-minute episodes.
Cases were presented from a relatively neutral point of view and the action was confined to the courtroom itself, with occasional brief glimpses of waiting areas outside the courtroom. Although those involved in the case were actors, the jury was made up of members of the general public from the immediate Granada Television franchise area taken from the electoral register and eligible for real jury service: it was this jury alone, which decided the verdict.
Judge Shant says: "Half the kids I say that to at university look at me and say 'what's Crown Court?' The thing with the Crown Court show was it was very realistic; where you had members of the public, it wasn't actors, selected to deliver a verdict but there were actors playing out the trial. So you had a sort of real reaction from people to evidence. And that was my first taste of what happens in a courtroom. I have to say I find it riviting stuff".
Ignoring the initial careers advice, she finished her A-Levels and went to read law at Leicester University, and moved to London - the only place you could do the Bar course back then.
Her pupilage was with a London Chambers, before she returned to the MIdlands and a place in a Leicester Chambers. She rose to the role of part-time judge or Recorder in 2001. "Frankly there was, at one time, a presumption that you had to have a certain background to be a lawyer or a judge, and I think a great deal has been done to change that perception, particularly by those in charge of the profession these days. There's a strong message," she says.
"When I did my pupilage, there was a Asian woman who was a barrister who inspired me because in those days there were very few doing criminal law and she was in her forties and had been a criminal barrister then for many many years, which I found inspiring. So I think it is important to see role models like herself. That said, there are some senior women in the profession I see as role models".
She fondly recalls her time at Derby Crown Court Court and the staff who went above and beyond during the Covid pandemic to keep the wheels of justice turning. Judge Shant was in court nearly everyday from the beginning of lockdown, and she pays tribute to the lovely staff and barristers at Derby who made her feel so welcome during her time there.
The cases at Derby have been varied, like in Nottingham's Crown Court. One hugely high-profile murder she presided over was the double killing of Helen Hancock and Martin Griffiths who were both stabbed to death by Mrs Hancock's estranged partner Rhys Hancock.
The then 39-year-old, a former head teacher from Etwall, had learned about their relationship days before and snapped. He grabbed two kitchen knives, drove to Duffield and killed the pair in the early hours of New Year's Day, 2020. Both were found dead in her bedroom at New Zealand Road with Mrs Hancock's head on Mr Griffiths’ lap.
Hancock, of Portland Street, then calmly phoned 999 himself and chillingly told the operator: “I have just murdered my wife in her bed. I have stabbed them and slit their throats. There is blood everywhere”. Jailing him for life at Derby Crown Court in October 2020 and telling him it will be 31 years before he is eligible to apply for parole, Judge Shant said while sentencing: “It was a brutal attack.
“You inflicted on Helen Hancock 66 injuries. It was a ferocious attack. You inflicted on Mr Griffiths 37 injuries."
Judge Shant, who turns 60 this year, is looking forward to her time in Nottingham - a city she knows well. She was based at Nottingham's 1. High Pavement Chambers for a while. Her name Nirmal, which means pure, is often misspelt by the media as "Normal" - thanks to Google's auto-correct - but she's pretty used to it now.
"It's a larger court centre," she says of the city's crown court. "The tenure as a resident judge in Derby is eight years. You can't actually do more than eights years. This seemed like a good challenge. It is a bigger place".
She now lives with her husband two children in Nottinghamshire, and relaxes playing the "piano badly". She loves reading and could happily be on a desert island for many years with a radio and books.
When asked about any memorable cases, she is not drawn on any specific one. She says: "Whenever you are dealing with death, it is sad. Sad for many reasons; for a defendant and for the victim's family, so I think most of the cases were memorable, sometimes for the wrong reasons.
"People surprise me sometimes. They behave with such dignity in such difficult circumstances on both sides. It is quite touching sometimes".
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