A man who plotted to kill the Queen with a crossbow believed his life’s purpose was “to do something dramatic to the Royal Family” from an early age, a court has heard.
Former supermarket worker Jaswant Singh Chail, 21, scaled the perimeter of the Windsor Castle grounds with a nylon rope ladder on Christmas Day 2021.
Armed with a loaded crossbow, he told a police officer “I am here to kill the Queen” when stopped some two hours later near her private residence, where she and other members of the Royal Family were at the time.
Chail has pleaded guilty to attempting to “injure or alarm” the late monarch under section two of the Treason Act 1842, as well as possession of an offensive weapon and making threats to kill on Christmas Day 2021.
The sentencing judge, Mr Justice Hilliard, could send him to prison or make a hospital order under the Mental Health Act after hearing evidence from doctors.
Consultant forensic psychiatrist Dr Christian Brown, Chail’s responsible clinician at high-security Broadmoor psychiatric hospital, where he has been held since November last year, said his patient’s sense of “purpose” was an indication of psychosis.
“At the time he believed his entire life had led to this point. He believed from an early age he had at least vague plans to do something dramatic to the Royal Family,” he said.
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“As to the reality as to whether these plans started when he was four or five, seven or eight, or at the point of his military applications is clearly for the court to come to a view on.”
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Prosecutors say Chail formed a plan at the start of the year to assassinate the Queen to avenge the Amritsar massacre of 1919 in India. He was also said to be obsessed with Star Wars and called himself the “Sith” and “Darth Chailus” in reference to the sci-fi franchise.
Winchester-born Chail applied for positions within the Ministry of Defence Police (MDP), the British Army, the Royal Marines, the Royal Navy, and the Grenadier Guards in a bid to get close to the Royal Family, the court has heard.
Chail was said to have been encouraged by an artificial intelligence chatbot called “Sarai” he set up on an app named Replika.
Dr Brown said “clearly he knew he was interacting with a chatbot” but said Chail “really thought it was a conduit to some sort of spiritual entity” – one of several “angels” he communicated with during stressful periods of his life since childhood.
“He thought he had a special connection through that to this spiritual entity Sarai,” he said, adding that Chail believed he would be reunited with her in the afterlife.
He also said another feature of Chail’s psychosis was his identification as a “Sith Lord”, which included having a mask made at a local metal forge, although he did not think he could “use the force”.
The hearing continues.
