Sukhwinder and Jassi in a picture  taken shortly after their 1999 marriage

A court in India has upheld the life sentences given to four men charged in connection with the murder of a British Columbian beautician in India eight years ago.

 

Three others who were sentenced to life imprisonment in connection with case that shocked the world were acquitted.

 

The appeal court decisions were handed down late last week in Punjab, India.

 

Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu, or Jassi, who graduated from high school in Maple Ridge, was 25 when she was kidnapped, beaten and strangled to death on June 8, 2000.

 

She had earlier married a poor auto-rickshaw driver, Sukhwinder "Mithu" Singh without her family's consent.

 

Her body was found in a canal 45 kilometres from Kaonke Khosa, Punjab, where she had moved with her new husband, Mithu, three months earlier.

 

The kidnappers had left Mithu for dead after attacking him with swords and sharpened sticks.

 

Shortly after Jassi's body was found with its throat slit, Indian police alleged that family members, including her mother and uncle in B.C., paid thugs up to $50,000 for the hit.

 

Indian police in court papers allege that the order to kill "came from Canada" after Jassi pleaded for her life over the phone from an abandoned farmhouse.

 

They have charged Jassi's mother Malkiat Kaur and uncle, Surjit Singh Badesha both of Maple Ridge, with conspiracy to commit murder.

 

The wealthy Maple Ridge farming family, which was allegedly upset about the secret wedding, has denied any involvement in the incident.

 

Indian police have revised their extradition requests for the Canadian suspects at least four times.

 

The mother and uncle remain proclaimed offenders under Indian Law and can be arrested if they set foot on Indian territory.

 

Originally, eleven people, including another uncle of Jassi's in India, an Indian police inspector and the leader of a local gang, were arrested in connection with the case.

 

As the case wound through the court system, all but four were convicted.

 

In the meantime, Mithu, languishes in an Indian jail on rape charges, a case he claims was fabricated by his wife's family to discredit him.

 

Last June, two RCMP officers from Canada visited Mithu to record a statement.

 

In upholding the sentence last week, Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel and Justice S.D. Anand, ruled that the life sentences against Darshan Singh, one of Jassi's uncles in Punjab Anil Kumar and Ashwani Kumar, two of the contract killers and Joginder Singh, a police inspector, will stand.

 

Three life sentences given to Hardev Singh, Gurwinder Singh and Gursharan Singh were set aside.

 

The ruling comes in the wake of NBC's documentary on the murder which was aired last month.

 

The documentary Forbidden Love, which retold the story of the murder, featured Vancouver publisher Harbinder Singh Sewak and the deputy-editor in chief of The Province newspaper, Fabian Dawson, who broke the original story.

 

Sewak, who publishes the Asian Pacific Post and South Asian Post, has developed a website called www.justiceforjassi.com, which has attracted thousands of people from around the world to a petition.

 

Jassi's murder has been told in three documentaries and a made-for-TV movie.