arrested one year ago<\/a> this week, after a 10-week police investigation. <\/p>\nHe was initially charged with wounding the other player with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years\u2019 imprisonment. The victim was left bleeding and required surgery for a broken jaw. He had to take time off work to recover, court documents state.<\/p>\n
Kumar pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of injuring with intent to injure, which carries a maximum sentence of five years\u2019 imprisonment. <\/p>\n
The victim did not appear in court for this week\u2019s sentencing, and no victim impact statement was read aloud. The judge was told the victim had no interest in meeting Kumar for a restorative justice conference, a court-facilitated meeting in which a defendant can apologise in person. <\/p>\n
Judge Retzlaff noted that Kumar seemed to be making steady progress towards rehabilitation \u2013 having started a stopping violence programme and applied for a discharge without conviction \u2013 when he had a major setback last month that \u201cunfortunately put a halt to that positive progress\u201d. <\/p>\n
While receiving a ride home from a Kingsland bar around 4am, he punched a male relative who was also in the back seat, court documents state. The car then pulled over, and he punched a female relative twice in the face and pulled her out of the vehicle by her hair. <\/p>\n
When the male victim asked Kumar why he had done that, the defendant responded by punching him again, continuing the attack after he fell to the ground. Kumar then fled, but was arrested a short distance away. <\/p>\n
He initially denied attacking the relatives. When asked by police about the football match incident, he claimed he had acted in self-defence. <\/p>\n
His lawyer said he was now ashamed of his \u201cimpulsive and violent behaviour\u201d in both situations. He had no memory of why he attacked his relatives. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s very remorseful for the harm he\u2019s caused,\u201d Osborne said, acknowledging that a short prison term was needed because Kumar did not have an address for home detention. <\/p>\n
He noted that the consequences for his client would be dire. A deportation notice had been issued and, although Kumar wanted to oppose it, doing so would be difficult, Osborne said. <\/p>\n
The judge ordered 18 months\u2019 imprisonment. He urged Kumar to redouble his efforts to put his life back on track when released, even though it wouldn\u2019t be easy if he were separated from his family by deportation. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe physical harm you caused is clear,\u201d he said, adding that he had no doubt the first victim also suffered psychological harm as a result of the attack. \u201cHe should have been entitled to enjoy a soccer game without this happening to him.\u201d<\/p>\n
The judge declined the Herald\u2019s request to take a photo at the hearing, citing Kumar\u2019s lack of a criminal record, his relative youth and his \u201cpast experiences of trauma and violence that he himself experienced\u201d from his father. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou have not had a happy upbringing in certain seasons of your life,\u201d the judge acknowledged. <\/p>\n
But he advised Kumar, \u201cYou need to develop a mechanism to steer away from this violence, or it\u2019s going to keep landing in prison.\u201d<\/p>\n
Craig Kapitan<\/a> is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kumar\u2019s Division 3 football team, Waitemat\u0101 FC, had been playing Albany United at Sunnynook Park on Auckland\u2019s North…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":605105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74,7125,1975,3952,1647,92642,5033,1872,6119,26845,5904,52168,2082,42,78,14641,25079,108,39533,78929,120,10543,43,529,90,175177,9617,8442,101263,1330,5763,74908,18484,24002,107,60048,40,38,41,39,114941,38658],"class_list":["post-605104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-after","tag-amateur","tag-at","tag-aucklands","tag-breaking","tag-coward","tag-deportation","tag-face","tag-faces","tag-fc","tag-final","tag-footballer","tag-for","tag-headlines","tag-in","tag-jailed","tag-jaw","tag-kicked","tag-kicking","tag-kumar","tag-likely","tag-match","tag-news","tag-north","tag-on","tag-opponent","tag-player","tag-prison","tag-punch","tag-raymond","tag-sentence","tag-serving","tag-shore","tag-stranger","tag-then","tag-threw","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-waitemat","tag-whistle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}