then went to the police<\/a>, first filing a complaint online and then in person at the Henderson police station. <\/p>\nShe provided police with screenshots of his threatening messages. <\/p>\n
![\"Kanwarpal]()
Kanwarpal Singh appears in the High Court at Auckland for murdering Zana Yaqubi. Photo \/ Jason Oxenham<\/p>\n
An Independent Police Conduct Authority report later found police systems for logging stalking reports were not fit for purpose and it had failed to link her with another young woman who had complained about Singh. <\/p>\n
On December 19, 2022, Yaqubi caught a bus home from working at an outlet store at the Westgate shops, then walked along an alleyway towards her home.<\/p>\n
Singh was waiting and approached her with a knife in hand.<\/p>\n
She tried to call police on her phone but he stabbed her 12 times in the stomach and chest. <\/p>\n
Four of the wounds individually could have been fatal. Yaqubi died where she fell.<\/p>\n
A review of the evidence in Singh\u2019s murder case showed he had been thinking about killing Yaqubi for months \u2013 as early as July 10, 2022. <\/p>\n
Police found him at his home the day after the murder. <\/p>\n
\u2018Severely personality disordered\u2019<\/p>\n
When he appealed against his sentence, Singh\u2019s lawyers provided the Court of Appeal with a new psychological report. <\/p>\n
It said that the convicted man was \u201cseverely personality disordered\u201d \u2013 narcissistic, obsessional, histrionic, with anti-social attitudes.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeemingly [he has] an attitude that he can do whatever he wants, and whatever it takes to get what he wants, even … at the expense of others or society.\u201d<\/p>\n
Singh\u2019s view of the relationship he believed he had with his victim was \u201cseriously distorted\u201d.<\/p>\n
Possibly, he had delusions of erotomania \u2013 the belief that another person is in love with someone \u201cwhen they are clearly not\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr Singh lacked the capacity to love any person in a healthy way and his obsessive behaviour towards the victim was more about him wanting to be right, and win, than pursuing somebody he really cared for,\u201d the appeal court\u2019s summary of the report said.<\/p>\n
But, in the psychologist\u2019s opinion, when Singh stabbed his victim he was no longer thinking she loved him but was angry with her for \u2013 in his mind \u2013 \u201cleading him on\u201d. <\/p>\n
Misguidedly, he wanted to hold her to account for doing so.<\/p>\n
Despite Singh\u2019s bid to get his sentence reviewed in light of the new report, the Court of Appeal justices turned him down.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do not accept that the report identifies any factors which could be considered to diminish Mr Singh\u2019s moral culpability,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndeed, in our view, the report identified factors emphasising the need for accountability and denunciation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shifting the blame<\/p>\n
When interviewed for the report, Singh still felt Yaqubi had somehow mistreated or \u201cmanipulated\u201d him and was ruminating or obsessing in the time before he killed her. <\/p>\n
He continued to shift the blame to his victim. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe presented with some extraordinary views,\u201d the appeal court said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuch as the victim\u2019s family should apologise to him; and if others had intervened, \u2018he\u2019 could have prevented the murder.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the time of the sentencing, Singh was 30 years old.<\/p>\n
He had been brought up in India, where his parents adhered to a traditional and conservative form of the Sikh religion, although he himself later converted to Islam.<\/p>\n
A cultural report maintained that Singh grew up accepting it was normal for his father to engender respect through violence and threats of violence. <\/p>\n
Singh blamed his parents for his actions too \u2013 he considered the violence he was exposed to as a child as partly to blame for the murder he committed.<\/p>\n
Singh\u2019s visitor permit, allowing him to be in New Zealand, expired about six months before he killed Yaqubi.<\/p>\n
He remains in prison for life, with no prospect of parole for 17 years.<\/p>\n
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME\u2019s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke\u2019s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of frontline experience as a probation officer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Because of that, he told a clinical psychologist there was no need for him to feel remorse. A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[62507,62509,9092,6375,4731,15159,2082,14154,48953,62503,62508,2882,17306,14909,4275,111,43,139,69,1118,423,5763,22498,62506,9631,12419,62505,1530,62504],"class_list":["post-81410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-21yearold","tag-62509","tag-against","tag-appeal","tag-days","tag-denied","tag-for","tag-give","tag-harassed","tag-kanwarpal","tag-kidnap","tag-love","tag-massey","tag-me","tag-murder","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-point","tag-sentence","tag-singh","tag-stalked","tag-student","tag-threatening","tag-yaqubi","tag-years","tag-zana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81410","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=81410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}