‘Cross examination was humiliating’

Hearing of Canadian citizen’s murder trial adjourned till Sept 8

LAHORE: The hearing of Canadian citizen Rajwindar Kaur Gill’s murder trial has been adjourned till September 8 when DSP Khalid Abubakar will be cross-examined by counsel for the complainant and the accused.

This Wednesday, Malik Arshad, counsel for accused Shahzad, cross-examined the father of the deceased, Sardar Sikandar Gill.

Speaking to The Express Tribune after the hearing Gill said he had felt humiliated by some of the questions asked. He said it hurt to be accused of having filed a false case.

At the hearing, the counsel for the accused had asked Gill how it was that he knew the IMEI number of her deceased daughter’s cell phone but not that of his own or his other children’s cell phones.

Gill responded that the Canadian police had provided him the number. He said his daughter had left Canada for Pakistan on August 23, 2012. He said he was not aware of the airline she had used to travel to Pakistan. He said he had not seen the accused, Shahid and Shehzad, before his arrival in Pakistan to determine his daughter’s whereabouts. He said he had not filed any case against then in Canada, England or Germany.

Gill told the court that he had submitted an application for registration of an FIR in the matter on January 2, 2013. This was after he was alerted by an official in the Canadian embassy to the possibility that his daughter had been killed. Earlier, the counsel for the accused asked Gill if he had brought the laptop computer and the cell phone he was associating with his deceased daughter with him from Canada. Gill denied the suggestion.

On Tuesday, Gill had told the court that in their last conversation his daughter had told the family that she was visiting Pakistan to meet a man who was like a brother to her.

He said that a few days later when they had contacted the airline by which she had travelled to Pakistan they were told that she had not boarded any flight out of Pakistan. Then, he said, the family had come to Pakistan and submitted an application with the police seeking a kidnapping case. He said a few days after the registration of the case the police had recovered her laptop, cell phone and some other belongings. Later, the family had left Pakistan for Canada, he said.

At an earlier hearing, Shahzad had confessed to his involvement in the murder. He had said that one Shahid alias Krishna Rai (A dual national) had offered to pay him Rs50,000 for his help in killing Rajwindar Kaur. He said that after receiving her at the airport at 2am in the morning they had taken Kaur to a restaurant in Mozang where they had served her a drugged beverage. He said after she fell unconscious they had strangled her. Later, they had dumped the body in a canal in Sheikhupura. He said three days after the incident Shahid had left Pakistan for Germany. Later, he had been declared a proclaimed offender.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 3^rd, 2016.