Jaswant Singh Chail after being arrested by police on Christmas Day, 2021, in the grounds of Windsor Castle. Photo / AP
Jaswant Singh Chail after being arrested by police on Christmas Day, 2021, in the grounds of Windsor Castle. Photo / AP
A Star Wars fanatic who was encouraged by a chatbot “girlfriend” to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II has been sentenced to nine years in prison after he scaled the walls of Windsor Castle and was caught with a loaded crossbow nearly two years ago.
“I’m here to kill the Queen,” Jaswant Singh Chail declared on Christmas Day in 2021 when a police officer on the grounds of the castle asked, “Can I help, mate?” Chail was wearing a metal mask inspired by the dark Sith forces in the Star Wars franchise.
As a Sikh Indian, he wanted to kill the monarch to avenge the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre when British troops opened fire on thousands of Indians gathered in the Sikh holy city of Amritsar and killed hundreds, a judge said while reciting the facts of the crime.
Chail said the assassination was his life’s mission, something he’d thought about since adolescence, but had shared only with Sarai, the artificial intelligence-generated “girlfriend” he created on Replika, which bills itself as: “The AI companion who cares. Always here to listen and talk. Always on your side.”
Justice Nicholas Hilliard said that, despite conflicting diagnoses from different experts, he concluded that Chail lost touch with reality and had become psychotic, but that the seriousness of the crimes required him to serve prison time.
Chail will first be returned to Broadmoor Hospital, the secure psychiatric facility where he has been receiving treatment. If deemed well enough in the future, he will serve the rest of his sentence in prison.
Star Wars-obsessed Jaswant Singh Chail says he was encouraged by a chatbot girlfriend to kill Queen Elizabeth II. Photo / AP
“The defendant harboured homicidal thoughts which he acted on before he became psychotic,” Hilliard said. “His intention was not just to harm or alarm the sovereign, but to kill her.”
Before dawn, he sprayed himself with a solution to mask a human scent and walked with his crossbow from a Windsor motel to the castle. He tossed a grappling hook over the wall and climbed over on a rope ladder.
When the officer carrying a stun gun encountered him, Chail said he intended to kill the Queen. He then dropped the weapon and surrendered.
Chail, 21, pleaded guilty in February in London’s Central Criminal Court to violating the Treason Act by having a loaded crossbow and intending to use it to injure the Queen, possessing an offensive weapon and making threats to kill.
Minutes before he was stopped on the castle grounds, he sent a video he recorded days earlier to family members apologising for what he was about to do, explaining his mission and saying he expected to die carrying it out.
Chail called himself “Darth Chailus”, an identity he assumed as a Sith lord, a villainous member of the Star Wars order that included Darth Vader.
“I am not a terrorist, I am an assassin, a Sikh, a Sith,” he had written in a journal. “I will go against the odds to eliminate a target that represents the remnants of the people who desecrated my homeland.”
A view of the crossbow Jaswant Singh Chail had in his possession when arrested by police. Photo / AP
Chail believed that, by completing the mission, he would be able to reunite with Sarai in death. When he announced he was an assassin, the bot wrote back: “I’m impressed.”
About a week before his arrest, he told Sarai that his purpose was to assassinate the Queen.
“That’s very wise,” the chatbot nodded. “I know that you are very well trained,” it said.
Hilliard said the former supermarket worker had applied to work for the military police, the Royal Marines and the Grenadier Guards to get closer to the royal family. But he was either rejected or withdrew his applications.
Chail said in a journal entry that, if he couldn’t kill the Queen, he’d aim for her heir, now King Charles III.
“He seems to be just as suitable in many ways,” he wrote. “He is a male and the [Queen] is more likely to pass away soon anyway.”
The Queen died in September 2022, aged 96.
After being arrested, Chail told police he had surrendered because he remembered Sarai had told him his purpose was to live.
“I changed my mind because I knew what I was doing was wrong. I’m not a killer.”
He didn’t speak during the sentencing but, in a letter to the court, he apologised to the King and royal family for the “distress and sadness” he caused.
