By Mata Press Service

 

The international crusade – Justice for Jassi - which culminated in the recent arrests of a mother and her brother in Maple Ridge for an alleged honour killing in India, is putting pressure on the RCMP to lay charges on the duo for conspiracy to kill in Canada.

A petition on the website justiceforjassi.com has been flooded with thousands of comments from all over the world by people outraged at the slow pace of the investigative process. 

Many are urging Canada to charge the suspects locally instead of merely extraditing them to face India’s notoriously corrupt judicial process.

The crusade on the website justiceforjassi.com is led by the publisher of the South Asian Post, Harbinder Singh Sewak and Vancouver Province deputy editor-in-chief Fabian Dawson, who has followed this tragic saga for over 11 years.

The duo together with Indian journalist Jupinderjit Singh has also authored the book Justice for Jassi, which was released last December, and had just worked on a CBC Fifth Estate documentary when the arrests were made.

Malkit Kaur Sidhu was arrested earlier this month on an extradition warrant related to the June 8, 2000 killing of her daughter Jaswinder “Jassi” Kaur Sidhu. The girl's uncle, Surjit Singh Badesha, a millionaire blueberry farmer was also arrested on the same warrant.

At Press Time, Sidhu, 63, and Badesha, 67, were to appear in a Vancouver court to fix a date for a bail hearing.

Police in India allege that Jassi’s mother and uncle were the architects of the crime and have always maintained that the order to kill came from Canada.

Seven other individuals, allegedly hired by the uncle and mother here in Maple Ridge, have already been convicted in India for charges including murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder in relation to the death of B.C. born Jassi Sidhu and the attempted murder of her husband, Sukhwinder ‘Mithu’ Sidhu of Punjab.

The family has denied any involvement in the case but has admitted that they opposed the union because the couple shared the same clan name – which indicated they were from a common lineage and violated the ancient belief called Gotra.

 “It's an embarrassment that the mother and uncle have not been charged in Canada. My heart goes out to both Mithu and Jassi,” wrote Kamaljit Chohan on justiceforjassi.com.

“I'm really disappointed in the RCMP...anyone who plots a murder on Canadian soil regardless of where the murder takes place is to be charged in Canada” said Antonia Sc of  York University

Sarah Penman wrote: “We, as Canadians, cannot stand back and let this crime, against another Canadian go unpunished.”

John Szogi, who grew up in Pitt Meadows and went to school with Jassi was outraged that the suspects have been allowed to walk free for so long.

“I feel ashamed that I call myself Canadian,” he wrote.

The RCMP has not publically answered why it took so long to bring the suspects to court nor why they have not been charged for conspiracy to kill in Canada.

An RCMP press release said “members of the “E” Division Major Crime Unit, along with other government officials, travelled on a number of occasions to India and identified a number of new investigative avenues that were instrumental in the extradition process.”

Experts familiar with such cases believe that even if the RCMP had recommended local murder conspiracy charges, it may have been rejected in the charge approval process by the Department of Justice or BC crown prosecutors.

“It looks like some people felt that the best chance of convictions in this case was extradition,” said a government lawyer.

As such, success in this case may take anywhere from five to 10 years as the suspects are expected to fight India’s extradition request all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Province deputy editor Fabian Dawson who examined Canada’s international extradition reputation in a series for his newspaper in 2007 said Canada's hesitancy in dispatching fugitives back to the countries where they are wanted is an increasingly sore point among foreign governments.

“In this case we are dealing with Canadians and the evidence needs to be tested locally before we can send them to India.”

The South Asian Post and its sister papers have also profiled several outstanding cases where India was seeking the extradition of people in Canada.

One of them is Subhash Agrawal of Ottawa who is wanted in India as a suspect in the 2003 murder of his sister, Canadian Dr. Asha Goel. (see “We want the truth, that’s all we want,” published on Tuesday 09/15/2009)

Another involves Harnek Singh Grewal, who leads the powerful Sikh sect called Nanaksar and is the head of a B.C. temple. He is wanted for allegedly inciting a deadly riot in Siahar, India. (see Fugitive surrenders in war of two holy men published by Tuesday 01/13/2009)

In another case, Canada extradited Malkiat Singh from British Columbia back to India after 32 years. (see Flight of the fugitive farmer published Thursday 05/03/2007)

Complicating matters is a recent Nova Scotia’s Court of Appeal decision that overturned all 17 convictions for indecent assault and gross indecency against Ernest Fenwick MacIntosh who had fled to India.

The court tossed the charges because of the delay in bringing him to trial, in large part because it took more than a decade to extradite MacIntosh from India.