Your Sikhs today: Divorce Sikh style

This is NOT our typical "Your Sikhs today" story involving drug smuggling, Diversity Truck Lines and the Singh School of Truck Driving. Rather it is a sad tale of a Sikh couple, Jagpreet Singh (51) and Balwinder Kaur (41)...

...whose marriage ended just six days after Mr Singh landed in Canada, sponsored by Ms Kaur. We should say the late Ms Kaur, as Mr Singh has now been found guilty by a British Columbia court of murdering her. Here's what happened. 

Mr Singh and Mr Kaur were married for over 20 years. They were the parents of two children who grew up in India with their parents. Their daughter moved to Canada as one of the 1000s of "temporary foreign students" welcomed by the Liberal government of former PM Blackie McBlackface. In a typical case of chain migration, Ms Kaur came to Canada in 2022 to "assist" [babysit? Ed.] her daughter.

Mr Singh arrived in mid-March of 2024. He had been in Canuckistan only six days when, on the fateful night, the couple went out to a gurdwara (temple) and later a mall. They returned around 2130, and within the hour Ms Kaur was stabbed. A neighbour arrived at their basement apartment in Abbotsford BC shortly thereafter and saw Ms Kaur motionless in a pool of blood, inside the doorway.

In her judgment, Madame Justice Andrea Ormiston of the BC Supreme Court wrote, "When police entered the home, Mr Singh was a few metres away from her, either seated or kneeling on or near the sofa in the living room." He was arrested immediately, at which time he "had a bump and a minor cut to his forehead that he agreed were caused in the course of his arrest. He also had a small abrasion, or a superficial cut to his left shoulder. Mr. Singh showed no signs of impairment or intoxication, nor was any such thing asserted by him in his evidence."

The police found two bloodied knives in the basement suite, which appeared to be kitchen cutlery, not the kirpan (small dagger) that all Sikh men wear at all time. Expert evidence, wrote the udge "confirms...that there were significant bloodletting events in this basement suite, and a trail of blood between the bathroom and the living room that indicates the source of blood was moving through various spaces in the suite."

In his statement to police, Mr Singh said an argument arose when Ms Kaur told him to get a job. In court, he testified that the conflict began when he "proposed sexual intimacy" (he did not say the actual words used) and was rebuffed by Ms Kaur.

Mr Singh said the dispute continued with him telling her to stay home from work so they could spend time together, but she refused. Judge Ormiston noted that evidence was presented in court that Ms Kaur had made statements indicating she was "afraid of Mr. Singh arriving and that she did not want him to come to Canada."

In court, Mr Singh admitted that the couple had a verbal conflict that turned physical. Wrote the judge, "Mr. Singh says he punched Ms. Kaur in the face.... When she left the room for the kitchen, he says he followed her to apologize and that he had calmed down, but she then brandished a knife." Mr Singh claimed he disarmed his wife and put the knife back in the drawer, but alleged that she continued to swear at him and took a knife out of the drawer a second time. 

He testified that when he made a second attempt to disarm her, "the knife made contact with his shoulder and he became angry. He Singh says he accidentally poked her with the knife in her stomach."

Mr Singh maintained that he had no memory of Kaur receiving fatal injuries, but an autopsy showed that his wife died of significant blood loss caused by seven stab wounds to her neck and chest. Judge Ormiston also noted that Mr Singh mentioned nothing about his wife brandishing a knife when he spoke to the police. Instead, he told them he didn’t know what happened after the argument.

Defence counsel urged the court to find that the accused blacked out with rage during the altercation, so that a conviction for manslaughter rather than murder would be just.The trial evidence focused on the issue of intent, specifically whether the Crown proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr Singh had the intent required to be convicted of murder.

Two witnesses testified that Mr Singh told them he had killed Ms Kaur, one testifying that he said, "I finished her off because she was deceiving me."

Judge Ormiston found Mr Singh's testimony "untrustworthy and unreliable [and] incapable of raising any reasonable doubt about murderous intent, about Ms Kaur provoking Mr Singh in the way he described, or about such provocation causing him to suddenly experience an overwhelming loss of control that is legally excusable." As well, on the issue of memory loss, the judge wrote that "there is no basis to find that Mr. Singh perpetrated an unremembered attack on Ms. Kaur."

The case of R v Singh will be back on the court docket on October 19th, by which time a psychiatric assessment is supposed to be completed, and presented as part of a sentencing hearing. Defence counsel is expected to suggest a sentence of less than six months, so that the wife-murdering Mr Singh will not be at risk of deportation.

Your Singhs today: British Columbia double murder edition

For some time, "Your Sikhs today" has been a standing headline on WWW. Every day we receive tips and leads to news of crimes -- criminally dangerous driving, extortion, arson, drug smuggling, and murder -- committed by Sikhs living (legally or otherwise) in our countries. All Sikh men bear "Singh" as a surname or middle name.

As I said, we receive such news every day, but Ed. declared a moratorium on posting such, not because we cavil at fanning the flames of anti-Sikh sentiment (especially in British Columbia and Ontario) but because our readers are getting bored, as witness the declining number of "hits" on such articles. Today's story, however, is so horrific that it cannot pass unnoticed.

Yesterday, three Sikhs men from Surrey BC were found guilty of killing an Abbotsford BC senior couple in their home. Pictures of the murderous Singhs are hard to find. Some meeja outlets have confused them with the "Surrey 3" implicated in the 2023 assassination of Sikh extremist leader Hardeel Singh Nijjar. So Ed. has inset a court artist's drawing into a photo of their victims.

In a crime reminiscent of the movie In Cold Blood, the elderly couple, Arnold and Joanne De Jong, were murdered in their Abbotsford home in May of 2022 by Abhijeet Singh, Gurkaran Singh, and Khushveer Singh Toor. 

Dismissing the "botched robbery" defence put forward at trial, Justice Brenda Brown accepted the Crown's argument that the three men were motivated by "debt, financial pressure and greed" when they  planned the home invasion and murders.

Evidence was presented during the trial that they used the De Jongs' credit cards, driver's licence and cheques to make purchases, pay off debt, withdraw cash and send money to relatives in India. Said the judge, "I’m satisfied that the murders of both victims were carefully planned, deliberated and executed. I’m satisfied that each accused is guilty of first-degree murder."

The bodies of the De Jongs were discovered on the morning of 9 May 2022 in their home on a rural road in east Abbotsford. Arnold De Jong owned two trucking companies and was a stereotype of the rich farmer portrayed stories like In Cold Blood. 

The court heard that Joanne De Jong, 76, was found in her bed with her hands and feet tied by rope and surrounded by a “significant amount” of blood. A pathologist determined she had died as a result of "sharp-force trauma" – stab wounds to her neck, possibly caused by a screwdriver – and "blunt-force trauma" to her head, possibly inflicted by a hammer. 

Arnold De Jong, 77, was also found in bed – in a separate bedroom – with his hands and feet also bound, and his entire head and face tightly wrapped in duct tape. His cause of death was determined to be asphyxiation due to smothering. 

The court heard that the three Sikhs, who all lived together in Surrey BC, knew the De Jongs because Abhijeet Singh owned and ran a cleaning company, and the two others worked for him. They had done work at the De Jong home in July 2021 and April 2022. 

The Crown had argued that all three should share culpability no matter who inflicted the mortal injuries. Each of the defence lawyers argued that the killings were not premeditated – a requirement of first-degree murder – and that there was no evidence to directly link their client to the murders. The defence lawyers each argued that their clients might have participated in the home invasion, but they were not involved in the actual killing.

Justic Brown said, "The suggestion that anyone in the house would not have been aware of what was going on is unrealistic, and I reject any evidence suggesting otherwise." Both Abhijeet Singh and Khushveer Singh Toor had cleaned the De Jong residence a month before the killings, the judge found, and knew they would be recognized by the couple during the robbery. "Because of this, they could not leave the De Jongs alive at the conclusion of the home invasion. Even if the invaders were masked, the police would likely be able to learn their identities in short order."

Victim impact statements will be heard later this month. Under Canadian law, the murderous Sikhs will be sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of parole for 25 years. However, our legal expert reminds us, there is a loophole -- the "faint hope" clause in the Criminal Code -- which says parole eligibility hearings may be held earlier in certain cases. 

What if the Singhs raise the argument that they are actually political prisoners, since they were raising money to help in the fight for a Free Khalistan? Don't dismiss the possibility that a typically liberal Canadian adjudicator might just buy that!

Drunk driver mistakes police cruiser for taxi, winds up in jail

Every now and then we get a good dumber-than-dumb story. This one comes to us from Abbotsford BC, where an unnamed gentleman, obviously tired and emotional, failed to recognize this car for what it is.

Well, yeah... It's a police cruiser! Duhhhhh! But I guess it's possible it could be mistaken for a taxi... at night... in the dark... with drink taken.

The gentleman was the worse for wear, but not so much so that he failed to realize he was in no condition to drive. That's why he jumped into the back seat of the cruiser. "Get me out of here buddy," he told the astonished constable, "there’s cops everywhere!"

The cop took him, all right... straight to the local hoosegow.

Abbotsford police are showing their sense of humour [Cops with a sense of humour? Ed.] by posting memes of bizarre happenings on social media for "Driving Excuses Week". "This kind of thing happens more often than you'd think," they tweeted after posting this one.

Walt reminds all WWW readers: Don't drink and drive! (You might spill some.)