June 21, 2008
A Brampton man has been found guilty of murdering his 3 1/2-year-old niece – a painful death, which was likely caused when she was forcibly bent backwards, possibly over his knee.
Devinder Singh, 40, was convicted of second-degree murder yesterday in a Brampton courtroom where Justice David Corbett sentenced him to an automatic life sentence.
Jurors needed less than three hours over two days of deliberation to return their guilty verdict of second-degree murder as charged in the June 21, 2005, death of Rashmeet Oshan.
Singh denied ever harming his niece and his lawyer Michael Caroline urged jurors not to believe the “monstrous lies” he insisted had been told about his client by the deceased child’s mother.
But in the end, jurors believed the case made by prosecutors Stephen Laufer and Brian McGuire – that according to medical experts, Rashmeet’s “catastrophic injuries” could have only been caused by her being forcibly bent backwards over a knee or the arm of a chair.
The young child died from massive internal bleeding after her aorta was ripped in half when her lower spine was broken, jurors heard throughout the month-long trial.
Singh, who appeared shocked by the verdict, will learn how long he must remain locked up before being eligible to seek parole when he returns to a Milton court July 4.
Over the course of the trial, court heard how Rashmeet’s spine was broken twice, with her first injury occurring several weeks or longer before it was fractured again, resulting in her death.
Singh never took the stand, but denied hurting his niece in his police interview after his arrest, insisting he treated her as his own daughter.
He claimed she died from being submerged when accidentally falling head first into an inflatable wading pool at his home, perhaps being pushed by his 4-year-old son, or falling from the backyard swing set or her bicycle. He admitted he was babysitting the two children after working his regular night shift, and fell asleep on the couch only to be awakened by his son’s screams.
When he rushed outside, he found his niece bent over at the waist with her head and shoulders under the water of the less than a metre-deep pool.
He was surprised when told his niece died from “serious injuries” to her back and heart and not from drowning in the pool. Oshan’s mother, Ravinder, told the court how her brother-in-law had a history of being physically abusive towards her daughter, including once dragging her down stairs in his home and kicking her back because she wouldn’t stop crying. She said Rashmeet was scared of her uncle, who often refused to let her eat at the dinner table and would slap her face when she refused to sing. She never sought medical help because her sister and her brother-in-law said the police would become involved. Oshan and her daughter moved in with her sister and brother-in-law in 2003 after she decided not to return to her abusive husband in India.
In his closing address, Caroline urged jurors to acquit Singh because he never harmed the child.
“He fell asleep,” Caroline said. “He left the child unsupervised. But to tell this lie to you is, I suggest, monstrous.”
Even though defence medical experts sad her spine was more susceptible to further injury because of the previous break, crown medical experts said it would still have required significant force to fracture the spine again.
In his closing address, McGuire told jurors the defence theory that Singh’s 4-year-old son Kiran had pushed Rashmeet and caused her deadly injuries was “preposterous.”
“These injuries were caused at the hands of the defendant,” McGuire said. “This was no childhood accident. This was not a fall from a swing. This was a rare, catastrophic injury that took significant force.”
<!–
No comments yet... Be the first to leave a reply!