London: A Briton facing trial for killing Indian student Anuj Bidve told a psychiatrist after his arrest "If I said I was sorry, I would be telling a lie," the Manchester Crown Court has been informed.
Prof Nigel Eastman, a forensic psychiatrist, told the court that accused Kiaran Stapleton had a "very substantial lack of ability to feel what other people feel."
Stapleton, who called himself `Psycho` Stapleton at an earlier court hearing, has pleaded to manslaughter not amounting to murder, on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
Bidve`s parents from Pune are attending the ongoing trial. Bidve was killed on December 26 last year in Salford.
Eastman said "I don`t think he has got any real feeling for what he`s done, he`s sorry for his own situation rather than the victim`s."
He noted that Stapleton did not describe being frightened or upset after the shooting, while his friend, eyewitness Ryan Holden, was badly shaken.
He said of Stapleton "I don`t think it`s because he`s the harder of the two men, it`s because he doesn`t feel."
Eastman also described how Stapleton said how he felt a `glass wall` between himself and other people when acting violently.
Stapleton told the psychiatrist "If I`m going to do something, nothing will stop me. Even if there`s a camera there or the police.
Once I`m on one side of the glass wall I can`t get back. Nothing will stop me doing what I`m going to do."
Eastman told the court "I have seen no evidence of any real understanding of the emotional significance of what he`s done.
In the criminal world there`s nothing so worrying as the nutter.
Ordinary people you can cope with, you know how they react. Someone who doesn`t seem normal is worrying because they are unpredictable."
"To most people it would seem just very odd to go up to someone, a stranger, and shoot them. I think what he`s demonstrating is his very substantial lack of ability to feel what other people feel.
I don`t think he has any real feeling for what he`s done," the psychiatrist said at the trial.
PTI
