When Anita Majumdar was first cast to play in a CBC film production for a role based loosely on the life of Maple Ridge beautician, Jaswinder Kaur, she didn’t know the tragic scope of her character’s tale.

"My mother knew her story," said the Port Moody actress, who is playing the star role in the CBC production, Murder Unveiled, a film loosely based on the life of Jaswinder Kaur.

"When she filled me in on the details, I was shocked and overwhelmed that such a thing could happen to someone from Canada, all for falling in love."

By now, the tragedy of Jaswinder Kaur is well known across the country, and as far as the American south, thanks to the media coverage of the story from programs such as NBC’s Dateline.

Kaur, or Jassi as she was known to friends, was 25 when she was kidnapped, beaten and strangled to death in India by a group of thugs whom Indian police allege were hired by Jassi’s mother Malkiat Kaur and uncle Surjit Singh Badesha, both of Maple Ridge.

Kaur apparently was killed because she had fallen in love Sukhwinder ‘Mithu’ Singh, a lower-caste rickshaw driver from Jassi’s mother’s village of Kaonke Khosa, Punjab.

"In approaching this role, my biggest problem was getting my head around the end result," continues Majumdar, in an interview with The Asian Pacific Post.

"I came to see that under no circumstance, no matter the complexity of caste or family honour, was Jassi’s death justifiable."

In Murder Unveiled, which aired recently on CBC, Majumdar plays the role of Davinder, a daughter of a rich family in Canada who on a trip to India falls in love with Surinder, a poor auto rickshaw driver in India, played by Chenier Hundal.

Murder Unveiled was filmed in Canada and the Punjab region of India with a South Asian cast from Canada, the U.K. and India.

The film was written by S. Bennett and M.R. Smith and produced by Force Four Entertainment producers Hugh Beard and Debra Beard.

It also stars Hassani Shapi, Lushin Dubey, Sanjay Talwar and Vinay Pathak.

The two-hour movie is Majumdar’s first foray into the tightly cut-shoot-cut world of television filming. Majumdar, who recently won the Best Actress Award at the inaugural Asian Festival of First Films for her portrayal of Davinder, came to the role via the world of theatre.

"Television is new to me and very different from the stage, which is the ultimate actor’s medium.

"There the performance is in your hands, it is the actor’s craft to narrate the story the way it needs to be told," she said.

Majumdar is currently working back in Toronto where she is starring in a play by Guillermo Verdicchia called Bloom at the Theatre Centre.