Dino Donaldson, 22, has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 23 years for the murder of student Anojan Gnaneswaran, 21, at Strawberry Hill station in Twickenham, south-west London. Donaldson bragged "I stabbed him fully" after the attack and said "I felt it go in him".
Attack on the tracks
Gnaneswaran, who studied accounting and finance, died at the scene on January 9, 2024. Donaldson followed him onto the tracks and stabbed him in the chest after a fight broke out on the platform between two groups of men over a drug deal of £50 for 10 MDMA tablets.
Less than an hour later, Donaldson, who was 19 at the time of the attack, was caught on CCTV on a night bus smiling and laughing. He was also recorded on the audio of a doorbell camera saying: "I stabbed him through the back bro, I stabbed him fully. I watched it and I felt it go in him, yeah."
Arrest and trial
Donaldson, from Ealing, was found by police hiding in a cupboard when officers came to arrest him at his home three days after the attack. Officers found 74 wraps of crack and heroin in his bedroom with a street value of more than £1,000.
He was found guilty of murder in a retrial at the Old Bailey in April. At the same court, Judge Angela Rafferty KC sentenced him to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 23 years.
Judge's remarks
The judge said that an initial interaction between a group Donaldson was with and Gnaneswaran developed into a "confrontation" after Gnaneswaran's younger brother Ashvin and some friends arrived. "Tensions rose and by the time of the encounter on platform two members of your group were being challenged and asked to identify themselves," Judge Rafferty told Donaldson. "What had begun as an unpleasant encounter between two groups of young men rapidly descended into violent chaos."
The court heard Donaldson stabbed Gnaneswaran once in the abdomen, leading him to flee onto the tracks. The defendant followed him and stabbed him in the chest as he lay on the tracks. "This was a savage and merciless killing of a helpless young man who was on the ground," the judge said.
Victim impact
In a statement from Gnaneswaran's brother Ashvin, who witnessed his brother's murder, read to the court by the prosecution, he said: "I know I will never meet anyone like him ever again." "I refused to believe my brother passed away to the point where I continued doing CPR even though I know he'd stopped breathing," he said.
A statement from the victim's father, Nesar Gnaneswaran, was read to the court by prosecutor Maria Karaiskos KC, where he said his eldest son was academically gifted but also talented in sports and held a black belt in karate. "We were lucky to have him in our lives for the short time we did," the victim's father said. "But he should still be here. Our family will never be the same. The impact of his loss is so much more than can be written down here or conveyed to the court."
Mitigating, Donaldson's barrister Dean George KC said his client has a "significant history of substantial trauma which has been verified by social services" and had suffered from "physical punishment, emotional punishment and mental punishment". The court heard Donaldson was first convicted of possession of a knife in a trial at Southwark Crown Court in 2025. He had previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess class A drugs, in relation to the purchase of ecstasy tablets from the victim, for which he was sentenced to six months imprisonment to run concurrently to his life sentence.
