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.
Police found open cans of alcohol in Sukhpreet Singh's car after he was followed through a Derbyshire town swerving across lanes in November last year. The Southern Derbyshire Magistrates' Court heard that Singh, a Pizza Hut worker and a resident of Higher Albert Street, Chesterfield, was driving without a license.
The bullet discharged from a 9-mm handgun when Smith used it to strike the other man. It missed the man but went into the apartment and struck Mya in the head before grazing her mother, the Times reported. Mya was rushed to a nearby hospital, where she battled for three days before being declared dead on March 23.
Rapinder Kaur, 36, said she, her turban-wearing husband and their two-year-old child were subjected to racial taunts by guards during a visit to the castle last year, The Independent reported.
Kunal Chopra was returning from work when his Hyundai Getz collided head-on with a concrete pumping truck on William Hovell Drive last week, SBS Punjabi, a multicultural and multilingual broadcaster in Australia, reported. The Australian Capital Territory Ambulance Service paramedics declared Chopra dead on the scene.
Harinder Singh Randhawa, who is recuperating in the hospital under police custody, was driving a Peugeot with four passengers inside when it collided with a Toyota Hilux ute at an intersection at Pine Lodge, near Shepparton earlier this month, the SBS Punjabi channel reported. Randhawa will be appearing in Melbourne Magistrates' Court on June 8.
More than 200 people held a candlelight vigil in McKinney, Texas, in the memory of a nine year-old Indian-origin boy who was allegedly stabbed to death by his father last week.Subramanian Ponnazhakan, 39, was booked on capital murder charge and his bail was set at $1 million, the McKinney Police said.
