A short-lived reunion between a husband and wife in 2024 ended in bloody tragedy, with 52-year-old Jagpreet Singh appearing in B.C. Supreme Court in Abbotsford on Monday (Jan. 12) for the first day of his murder trial.
Singh, charged with second-degree murder, listened to his appointed translator relay the words of Crown counsel Rob Macgowan, who presented the events of the evening that resulted in the death of 41-year-old Balwinder Kaur.
The husband and wife, who originally married in India in 2000, had been separated for quite some time due to Kaur travelling to Canada in 2021 to take care of their daughter, who was attending school here and had fallen quite ill.
But that all changed on March 9, 2024, when Singh arrived in Canada on a visitor’s visa and was met by his wife at the airport.
Unfortunately, the reunion did not have a happy ending, Macgowan said.
“Six days later, Ms. Kaur was dead, and Mr. Singh was in police custody,” he said.
The incident at the centre of the trial occurred on March 15, 2024, when Abbotsford police were called to a house in the 3400 block of Wagner Drive to respond to reports of a stabbing at approximately 10:50 p.m.
Const. Jean Wilding detailed the gruesome scene that she encountered as one of the first responding officers that night.
“When I first went inside the door, I could see a woman lying on her back in a pool of blood,” Wilding said.
Kaur had what appeared to be four stab wounds on her neck and four more on the left side of her chest near her heart.
Wilding then spotted Singh sitting on a couch. The officers placed him under arrest and then attempted to give the unresponsive Kaur life-saving measures.
“I kneeled down on my hands and knees beside her to begin these actions, and when I did so, I knelt on the broken handle of a steak knife,” Wilding said.
Despite receiving treatment at Abbotsford Regional Hospital, Kaur was pronounced dead at 12:03 a.m. on March 16.
Singh’s charges were then updated to second-degree murder, with him undergoing multiple police interviews.
As a result of Singh’s responses to the police, Macgowan said the focus of the trial is centred more around his state of mind during the time of the killing.
“It does not appear that there is likely to be any issue taken with the fact that Mr. Singh is responsible for Ms. Kaur’s death,” he said.
The Crown will try to prove that Singh possessed a state of mind that meets the qualifications for second-degree murder, which carries a minimum sentence of life in prison with no parole for 10 years.
Macgowan delved into a bit of the personal history between Singh and his late wife, much of which was derived from data collected from Kaur’s phone from the period of Jan. 17 to March 15, 2024.
“The examination revealed no communications by text or call between Balwinder Kaur and either of the phone numbers associated with Singh between the start of the authorized period and March 9, 2024,” he said.
A system message on WhatsApp revealed that Kaur had unblocked one of Singh’s numbers on Feb. 26 of that year, but there was no documented communication between the two until after Singh arrived in Canada.
Macgowan said several calls and texts were then exchanged between Singh and Kaur from March 10 to 14.
On the night of Kaur’s murder, she had communicated with her son through a video call at 10:14 p.m.
This was the last time she spoke to anyone on the phone, with further calls from her son and Singh’s mother going unanswered until cops arrived and arrested Singh at 10:58 p.m.
Throughout the course of the trial, the judge will hear testimony from multiple officers, forensics experts, and loved ones of the victim.
Singh is being tried by a judge alone, with his trial expected to take five or six weeks.