Forbidden love

It’s been almost four years since we told you the story of the young canadian, Jassi Sidhu, murdered in India after marrying a man of whom her family didn’t approve.

Then, last year, we learned that Jassi’s husband, Mithu, had been jailed under suspicious circumstances. So we decided to return to India to find out for ourselves what had happened to him and to those accused of killing his wife.

This time we found Mithu as he was escorted from a prison bus. He’s been incarcerated for almost 2 years now, awaiting trial for what he and many others insist is a totally false charge of rape. The accusation was made by a woman who turned out to be the servant of the man accused of masterminding Jassi’s murder. Mithu claims, it’s just another act of revenge by those who killed his wife.

Bob McKeown, Dateline correspondent: There’s no question in your mind, Mithu, that money changed hands here...

Mithu Singh, Jassi's groom: Not only me but my whole village where I live that knows I have been framed by use of money.

Even those in the Indian legal system acknowledge that justice here can be corrupted by money. And remember it wouldn’t be the first time Mithu was the target of false criminal accusations.

Jassi’s uncle who previously had him charged with a trumped-up case of kidnapping and rape when he first learned of their secret marriage.

Inspector Singh: There’s a general feeling that since they’ve done it in the past against Mithu, that they have been involved in implicating Mithu in this case this too.

Incredibly, when we returned to India, Mithu was stuck behind bars, while his wife’s murder case had dragged on so long that Indian authorities ordered most of the defendants free on bail.

With the glacial pace of Indian justice, you might assume the investigation back in Canada - and the case against Jassi’s uncle and her mother - would be moving more quickly. Not necessarily.

McKeown: Did you expect that sooner than later they would knock on your door and ask what you knew?

Deb Devos, Jassi's former teacher: Yes I did.

McKeown: And did that happen?

Devos:  It didn’t happen until the story broke in Dateline. I went to the Police Station, I gave my statement. They videotaped it apparently, and that’s the last I heard of it.

Perhaps that’s because there are still legitimate concerns about Indian police procedures and evidence, including the frequent use of torture and possible contamination of that evidence.

Remember that four years ago, when we first reported this story, Indian police said they not only had confessions, but showed us Indian cellphone records documenting calls made by the alleged killers in India, to the phones at Jassi’s family compound back in Canada.

Will cellphone records from North America help?
But, Dateline recently obtained more cellphone records. They’re Canadian records from Bell Canada that detail calls made from and received at the compound at the time of the murder. They provide an undeniable link between Jassi’s family in Canada and the accused killers in India.

If Canadian authorities wouldn’t accept what they considered to be tainted evidence from India, surely phone records from Bell Canada would confirm Inspector Singh’s claim that Jassi’s mother and uncle were complicit in her murder.

In just over a month, 147 phone calls were dialed from the telephone belonging to Jassi’s uncle Surgit, at family compound in Maple Ridge British Columbia, to the cellphones belonging to the men charged with Jassi’s murder, in India.

The list of calls included 40 calls to the man alleged to have been the masterminding the plot; and 5 to the man believed to have slit her throat. And 10 of those calls were made from Surjit’s phone on June 8, the day Jassi died—at or near the time of the murder.

We went back to the RCMP to ask why the Mounties have been so slow to act despite this compelling new Canadian evidence.

McKeown: 50 phone calls,  including phone calls on the night of the murder from that house in Maple Ridge. It would seem that for some reason, somehow the RCMP has been reluctant to become involved in this case?

Sgt. Worth: Sir, all I can tell you is that our investigation is on-going.

In the five years since Jassi was murdered, it was at least the first acknowledgment the Canadian police are finally investigating her case.

In British Columbia, the Canadian province where Jassi’s family lives, the administration of criminal justice is the job of the attorney general.

Wally Opal, B.C. attorney general: If there’s going to be confidence in the criminal justice system, then matters have to be investigated and prosecuted, if necessary, in a timely manner.

But Wally Opal, British Columbia’s current Attorney General explains that in Canada, prosecutors can’t tell the police how to do their job.

McKeown: There are phone records showing 147 calls between the cellphones of the alleged killers in India and the house in Maple Ridge...

Opal: Unlike the American system where the district attorneys get involved in the investigative stage and very often go with the police to the crime scenes, we don’t do that in this country.

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