A former member of indie band The Zutons has spoken after being seriously injured in a racist assault, telling Sky News he could have been killed and that he wants his attackers to face justice.
Boyan Chowdhury was treated in hospital following the incident, described by police as an “abhorrent” hate-related assault, which happened in the Wavertree area of Liverpool on Saturday afternoon.
Mr Chowdhury, who is in his 40s, says a group of young males, believed to be in their late teens, started shouting racist slurs when he asked them to move away as they were smoking near to him and his five-year-old son.
After taking his son to a neighbour’s house, he says two of the group continued to abuse him, and he was approached from the side and hit by a third.
“Something in my head just said, turn around quick. Instinctively I turned and I raised my hand, I took some of the blow away.”
Mr Chowdhury says he was left with a wound splitting his forehead down to his skull. He shared these graphic images, which we have blurred, on social media.
‘If I hadn’t turned, I don’t think I’d be here’
“I honestly believe if I hadn’t turned around at that time, I don’t think I’d be here because it would have been the back of my head,” he says. “It would have been a lot more serious.”
The musician says he has had little sleep since the incident and has been left “constantly looking out the window”.
He continued: “My hands don’t seem to stop shaking… My wife is scared and we’ve got our little boy as well – he was scared to go to school [on Monday]. But I don’t want to feel like I’m trapped. I can’t feel like I’m trapped.”
He says he wanted to speak out to show he is not ashamed. “There’s no shame in it. Why is it ok?
“People with that mindset, they do believe it’s okay. They do believe in a greatness of themselves over others. That’s what it comes down to and it’s a greatness embedded within this system…
“You can’t really turn your head away from it anymore. I think everyone has to start facing the reality, the horrible truth that this country is going into a really dark phase of its history and I still believe we’re in the early stages of it.”
He believes the reason for this is “rhetoric being peddled by people who want to make money off other people”.
The Zutons at the Mercury Prize show in London in 2004. Pic: AP/ John D McHugh
Mr Chowdhury, whose parents moved to the UK from Bangladesh, is proud of his heritage, “proud to be the child of an immigrant”.
But he says he has always faced racism. Growing up in the West Derby area of the city, “we used to get bricks and stones thrown”, he says. “It never went away.”
He says he has lost faith in the way incidents of racism are dealt with.
“I’m sure other people with other experiences of crime and assault have possibly different experiences, but these are my personal experiences through the ’80s, ’90s and 2000s.”
‘A shocking assault’
Mr Chowdhury was a guitarist and founding member of The Zutons, who had hits with Valerie, famously covered by Amy Winehouse, and songs including You Will You Won’t, Why Won’t You Give Me Your Love? and Oh Stacey (Look What You’ve Done!) in the mid-2000s. Their debut album, Who Killed… The Zutons? was nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2004.
He left the band in 2007 but returned for reunion shows in 2019 and is now working on other music and acting projects, as well as production.
He says he wants to keep busy following the attack and thanks his neighbours for their support. “We’ve got a really good community here.”
Merseyside Police are appealing for people with information to come forward.
Detective Inspector Debra Morley said: “This was a shocking assault that has absolutely no place in our communities. To racially abuse someone and then attack him with a weapon is abhorrent and I’m sure the public in Merseyside will be just as appalled as we are about what happened…
“Violence and hate crime will simply never be tolerated in our communities.”
