Published: 15 December 2011
by DAVID St GEORGE

HUNDREDS of evening rush-hour commuters looked on in horror as an “elegantly dressed lady” died under the wheels of an incoming Tube train at King’s Cross station in October last year.

The victim, a much admired and acclaimed human rights lawyer, was happiest wearing female clothing and was known by family and friends as Sonia, jurors at the Old Bailey heard this week.

Award winning solicitor David Burgess, a 62-year-old father of three, was violently pushed from the platform and killed in a deliberate attack by a person he had befriended and tried to help.

The accused, then known as Nina Kanagasingham, was living as a woman at a flat in Cricklewood and hoping for a successful sex change operation.

Kanagasingham, 35, an escort, of Chichele Road, admits causing the death of the victim but denies a murder charge.

“The prosecution say that this was the very deliberate murder of Sonia Burgess,” prosecutor Brian Altman, QC, told a jury when he opened the Crown’s case.

The bizarre circumstances of the attack on Mr Burgess, who lived off Shaftesbury Avenue in the West End and worked at the Wood Green-based legal firm of Luqmani Thompson and Partners, was caught by dozens of CCTV cameras.

Jurors have been given bundles of photographs of the tragic action on the evening of Monday October 25 last year on the Piccadilly Line platform.

Mr Burgess and Kanagasingham had been in each other’s company for an hour and a half before the attack, the court heard.

The prosecutor said “Sonia,” enjoyed a “brilliant reputation” as a distinguished legal consultant and was content to socially live life as a woman, with no desire for a sex change.

A divorcee with two daughters and a son, Sonia had close family ties and regularly worshipped at St Martin-in-the-Fields, in Trafalgar Square.

Kanagasingham came to London from Sri Lanka in 2000 and the two met in a bar.

Currently he wishes to be known by the first name Senn, and as a male, the court was told.

Defended by leading criminal QC Ed Rees, he often visited the Mr Burgess’s flat to shower and chat.

Judge Steven Kramer, QC, and the jury have been told that as there is “no issue” that Kanagasingham was responsible for the death, his mental state at the time will be the main focus of the trial, with several psychiatrists giving evidence.

Kanagasingham’s guilty plea to the lesser charge of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility – claiming paranoid schizophrenia – was not acceptable to the prosecution, said Mr Altman.

The trial continues.