Indian-origin man accused of killing 4 family members returns to US court
Darpan News Desk IANS, 07 Jun, 2023 02:22 PM
New York, June 7 (IANS) A 40-year-old Indian-origin man accused of killing his wife and three of her family members in 2019 appeared in a US county court for a pretrial hearing with his third defence team, a media report said.
Gurpreet Singh, a former truck driver who faces the death penalty if convicted, is presently housed in the Butler County Jail in Ohio without bond, the Journal-News, an Ohio-based daily, reported.
Singh, currently on trial for the four murders that took place at a West Chester apartment in 2019, appeared in a Butler County courtroom on Tuesday with his new attorneys.
Judge Greg Howard, who had set the trial for April 29, 2024 in February this year, said on Tuesday "that trial date will go forward".
The attorneys requested a second pretrial hearing on August 1.
With nearly two weeks of testimony and 14 hours of deliberation, the first trial in October 2022 did not reach a verdict.
Singh is charged with four counts of aggravated murder for allegedly shooting and killing his wife Shalinderjit Kaur, his in-laws, Hakikat Singh Pannag and Parmjit Kaur, and his aunt-in-law, Amarjit Kaur.
The prosecutors had told the court that Singh murdered his family by shooting them all in the head due to strained relationship with in-laws over money from land owned in India.
Arguing his innocence, the defence team at the first trial said the killings were part of a professional hit due to Pannag's financial woes and a dubious land contract deal in India with the "land mafia", the daily reported.
The defence told the court that three masked men broke into the apartment with baseball bats, and Singh ran for his life.
When he returned, everyone was dead.
However, the defence presented very little evidence to support this theory.
In total, Trump is facing 34 counts of falsifying business records, all of them allegedly "with intent to defraud and intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof," the now-unsealed indictment reads.
Trump became the first former President to be arrested and face a trial in the nation's 246-year history, plunging the US into unchartered legal and political territory. He is also a candidate for next year's presidential election, the leading candidate for the Republican nomination, and only two per cent behind President Joe Biden in polls.
One expert says Thursday's historic indictment of a former president is sure to make the line between politics and justice even more blurry. Neama Rahmani, a former assistant U.S. attorney who's now a personal injury lawyer in California, says prosecutors have always been wary of politically sensitive cases.
Nikit S Yadav, 22, and Raj Vipul Patel, 21, of Parsippany in New Jersey were involved in a computer virus scheme and demanded funds from the victim to remove unwanted items from their computer. The victim called a tech support number to assist with an issue with her computer last week.
The attack was reported from the Covenant School in Nashville, a private Christian school for students in pre-school to sixth grade, when the students are roughly 11 or 12 years old, the BBC reported.
The shooting was reported at around 2.30 p.m. on Sunday at the Gurdwara Sacramento Sikh Society near Bradshaw Road and Gerber Road in Sacramento County, ABC10 News reported. Sacramento County Sheriff's Office spokesperson Amar Gandhi said three people were involved in a fight that resulted in shooting.
