{"id":743482,"date":"2026-06-17T20:55:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T20:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/743482\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T20:55:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T20:55:08","slug":"appeal-court-flips-surrey-sex-assault-conviction-orders-new-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/743482\/","title":{"rendered":"Appeal court flips Surrey sex assault conviction, orders new trial"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>              Appeal court flips Surrey sex assault conviction, orders new trial<\/p>\n<p class=\"pubStamp\">Published 12:30 pm Wednesday, June 17, 2026<\/p>\n<p>The British Columbia Court of appeal has set aside a Surrey sexual assault conviction and ordered a new trial.<\/p>\n<p>Arjun Aaron Singh Sandhu had been found guilty by a Surrey provincial court judge.<\/p>\n<p>Justice Peter Willcock found the Surrey judge\u2019s assessment of Sadhu\u2019s credibility was \u201caffected by misapprehensions of evidence, circular reasoning, and an erroneous consideration of the appellant\u2019s statements as an admission,\u201d according to his<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bccourts.ca\/jdb-txt\/ca\/26\/02\/2026BCCA0268.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"> June 17 reasons for judgment<\/a>, delivered in Vancouver.<\/p>\n<p>Justices Karen Horsman and Geoffrey Gomery concurred with Willcock\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n<p>There is a publication ban on information that could identify the complainant. The court heard the sexual assault was alleged to have occurred in a hotel room in 2020.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI cannot see how the conviction can withstand scrutiny in light of the fundamental errors in the assessment of the evidence identified by the appellant. Despite the judge\u2019s clear acceptance of the complainant\u2019s testimony as credible and reliable, the conviction must be set aside and a new trial ordered,\u201d Willcock found.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe appellant was interviewed by the police about the events in question more than a year later, on January 10, 2022. Inaccuracies and omissions from the statement to the police were put to him in cross\u2011examination and used to impeach his credibility,\u201d the appeal court judge noted.<\/p>\n<p>Willcock noted the lower court judge had \u201cexpressly found that credibility and reliability of the parties were paramount to her decision.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe trial judge found there were a series of inconsistencies in the testimony of the appellant that caused her to reject his evidence,\u201d Willcock noted. \u201cShe considered the testimony of the complainant to be credible and reliable because she was firm in her responses, did not exaggerate, and admitted frailties in her memories.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Willcock said a conviction \u201cmust always rest on proof beyond a reasonable doubt\u201d and that \u201cproof beyond a reasonable doubt demands more than a \u2018considered and reasoned acceptance\u2019 of the complaint\u2019s evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Appeal court flips Surrey sex assault conviction, orders new trial Published 12:30 pm Wednesday, June 17, 2026 The&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":743483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,163792,87674],"class_list":["post-743482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-lower-mainland","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=743482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/743483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}