The mother of a student who died after he was attacked by racists is to meet with a senior judge to ask for more information about an undercover police officer who spied on her family.

Sukhdev Reel and her lawyers will speak with chairman of the public inquiry into undercover policing Sir John Mitting on Thursday to push for more details about David Hagan, known as HN81.

The officer spied on the justice campaign for her son Ricky, who died after a night out with friends in Kingston in October 1997.

His group were attacked by two white men, and as they fought them off Ricky vanished. His body was found in the River Thames a week later, and the police said his death was likely to have been an accident.

Mrs Reel wants to know if the secret police operation that targeted her family took vital resources away from the investigation into her son's death, and is pushing for more information than just the officer's cover name.

She said: "Just imagine 21 years from Ricky's death, just a name in isolation is meaningless. It could be anybody's name.

"We feel that for the undercover name to mean anything to us after so much time has elapsed we need to know more. Photographs, who he reported to. Access to all the original files held on the family members and the campaign.

"Our family has been through hell for the past 21 years. We still don't know who caused Ricky's death.

"The inquiry for us is important because we need to know how much of the damage to the initial investigation was because of spying. The money they spent on spying, they should have used looking for Ricky's killers.

"The public has a right to know if the investigation was bungled because police officers were there to spy and not to investigate Ricky's death."

David Hagan also secretly gathered information linked to the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence.

The public inquiry into controversial undercover policing tactics has been dogged by delays and the dissatisfaction of campaign groups affected at the levels of secrecy afforded to officers.

Mrs Reel asked to meet with the inquiry chairman and will be accompanied by her lawyers and her local MP, shadow chancellor John McDonnell, during the discussion at the House of Commons.

"I'm going there with an open mind," she said.

"I hope he is a human being. I hope he can see the anguish and trauma that I've been going through. Our family has been through hell and we haven't come out of that hell. We hope he can listen to us and maybe answer some of our concerns.

"My children were very young at the time. Did the police officers who were spying did they come to my house? Did they spy on my children? Who knows?

"Why did we come under the police radar? We were not doing anything unusual, all we were doing was asking for them to investigate our son's murder and that was all - that was our basic right."

The Undercover Policing Inquiry, which was launched in 2015, has already cost more than £10 million and was originally due to finish this year.

An "ambitious timeline" set out in a strategic review earlier this month now anticipates delivering a final report to the Home Secretary in December 2023, with two years of evidential hearings expected to start next summer.

The inquiry is investigating undercover operations conducted by police forces in England and Wales since 1968, involving hundreds of thousands of documents and the evidence of hundreds of witnesses.

It will focus on incidents of undercover officers from the Metropolitan Police's Special Demonstration Squad having sexual relationships with women involved in campaign groups, and using the names of dead children to create fake identities.

It will also encompass claims Scotland Yard spied on justice campaigns for murder victims, and the infiltration of unions and other organisations.

By Margaret Davis