A 35-year-old man who pushed a distinguished cross-dressing lawyer in front of a Tube train was yesterday jailed for life.

Senthooran Kanagasingham was undergoing sex-change treatment when he killed solicitor David Burgess at King’s Cross station in London.

Mr Burgess, 63, who preferred to be known as Sonia, was educated at Ermysted’s Grammar School in Skipton between 1959 and 1966 and had carried out his early training as a solicitor in the town.

Kanagasingham, of Chichele Road, Cricklewood, north London, was found guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, but cleared of murder, at the Old Bailey.

Doctors said Kanagasingham was back on medication and no longer required hospital treatment for paranoid schizophrenia.

Judge Stephen Kramer said Kanagasingham would have to serve a minimum of seven years.

He told Kanagasingham the solicitor had been “a really good and generous friend to you”.

The victim, a leading human rights and immigration lawyer and a father of three, was a cross-dresser who had befriended Kanagasingham, then known as Nina.

He had taken him to a doctor an hour before the incident in October, last year, because he was worried about his mental state.

Brian Altman QC, prosecuting, said shocked rush-hour commuters had seen Kanagasingham push Sonia from the back.