The new wife of a man who was stabbed to death at his Dunedin home had previously turned down a marriage to the alleged killer, a court has heard.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kamaljeet Kaur told the High Court at Dunedin this morning that she had married 27-year-old Gurjit Singh in a ceremony in India in May 2023 and her flights were booked and bags packed to join him in New Zealand on February 6 the following year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nine days before her scheduled arrival, her new husband was stabbed at least 46 times at his Liberton home and almost decapitated.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rajinder, 35, who previously employed the victim as a fibre-optic cable installer, has pleaded not guilty to murder.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kamaljeet Kaur said she discovered Rajinder’s father had approached a match-maker from a “wedding bureau” in India to find a wife for his son and she was identified as a possible candidate.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, she told the court she was “not interested” because she was focused on a relationship with Mr Singh.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, Rajinder\u2019s sister Harmeet Kaur said it was Kamaljeet Kaur\u2019s family who twice pressed for the marriage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Singh and Kamaljeet Kaur had come together when he added her as a friend on Facebook.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She said she told Mr Singh about her mooted marriage to Rajinder but never heard of any ensuing friction between the men.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The court also heard of further efforts made by the defendant to find a wife.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Harmeet Kaur was enlisted to ask Mr Singh if his sister would marry Rajinder, but Mr Singh rejected that proposal because she was too young.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The defendant was eventually married in January 2023, the court heard.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Singh was found dead outside his home, surrounded by shards of glass on the morning of January 29 last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hilary St resident Alan Richardson said he heard\u00a0breaking glass at 10.50pm the night before.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He immediately messaged a friend: “Jeeps just heard a lot of breaking glass outside”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Richardson said he later heard what sounded like the glass being cleaned up and thought he saw a car driving away when he looked across the road.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another resident Taylor Wyllie contacted police to report a “dark-skinned” man he saw loitering around Mr Singh\u2019s home a few days before the killing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I’d seen them looking into that property there and then when they noticed me, they kind of just turned around and started staring off into the distance. I just thought it was strange,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Wyllie described the man as having a “rough sort of beard” and wavy hair \u2013 not wearing a turban.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yesterday, the Crown outlined the “compelling” evidence the jury would hear over the next three weeks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
An examination of Mr Singh\u2019s Hilary St home found several blood stains\u00a0– as well as a hair found in the victim\u2019s hand – which could be attributed to the defendant with strong scientific certainty.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said Mr Singh\u2019s blood was also found in the upholstery of the defendant\u2019s car and police found a pair of Rajinder’s shoes with glass embedded in the sole which matched that at the scene.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jurors would watch CCTV footage from just hours before the attack which showed Rajinder buying gloves from Bunnings Warehouse and a scarf and knife from Hunting & Fishing \u2013 items that were never recovered by police.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When officers interviewed Rajinder, he said he was giving his wife a driving lesson at midnight on the night of Mr Singh\u2019s death.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was “impossible” that his blood was at the crime scene, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Singh had initially worked for Rajinder but left to set up his own business as a contractor in September 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Police forensic accountant Martyn Solomon said the victim\u2019s contracting income outstripped that of his former boss from that point.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Working for himself, Mr Singh made $157,798 gross while Rajinder earned $66,614 during that period, the witness said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Counsel Katy\u00a0Barker stressed the numbers were simplistic and did not take into account Rajinder\u2019s extended overseas trip, his other income streams nor his overall financial position with more than $800,000 in the bank.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Solomon accepted the defendant was in a stronger financial position overall.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ms Barker told the jury in her opening yesterday that the defendant had lived in New Zealand since 2015 and had built a good life here.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“This doesn\u2019t make any sense at all that [he] would risk losing all that . . . by killing Mr Singh, a person he\u2019d previously employed and was on good terms with,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The new wife of a man who was stabbed to death at his Dunedin home had previously turned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-141327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}