Two racist thugs who battered an Indian couple after they asked them not to drop litter outside their shop have been jailed.
Nathan Newton and Blake Beards, both 29, lobbed a fizzy drinks can onto the ground outside a newsagent’s on August 12, 2012.
Shop owners Surjit Kumar and his wife Nidero Rattu asked the pair to pick the can up and dispose of it in a rubbish bin outside Newport News Store in Shropshire.
Newton and Beards launched a racist tirade at the couple, who are from India, before attacking them when Mr Kumar took a picture of them on his mobile phone.
Mr Kumar needed stitches after Beards smashed him over the head with a 4ft-long fluorescent light tube. His wife also needed hospital treatment for a deep gash on her head.
Newton, of Wolverhampton, West Mids., was jailed for eight months and Beards, of Newport, was sentenced to six months in prison after they admitted affray at Shrewsbury Crown Court on Friday.
Speaking after the sentencing, Mrs Rattu said: “It was very, very scary. Not a nice experience at all and I thank God that I had not got my young son with me in the shop.
“It would have been dreadful for him to see something like that.
“This is a really friendly area and we have never experienced any trouble apart from that one incident.
“Customers came to our aid when the attack happened and the police arrived within minutes.”
She added that the attack had left her scared to be on her own in the shop.
“I tried to put on a smile and a brave face for a while if I was in the shop on my own but I just couldn’t do it. Now I can no longer work here on my own,” she said.
