Charges laid in 2000 murder of Maple Ridge woman

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MAPLE RIDGE (NEWS1130) – Eleven years after a 25-year-old Maple Ridge woman was brutally murdered in India, her mother and uncle have been charged.

Jassi Sidhu and her husband Mithu were viciously attacked by a gang of men in Punjab in 2000. Mithu survived but Sidhu’s body was found in a drainage ditch.

Sidhu’s 63-year-old mother, Malkit Kaur Sidhu, and 67-year-old uncle, Surjit Singh Badesha, both of Maple Ridge, were arrested Friday and will have an extradition hearing.

Seven others have been convicted in the case already in India.

Fabian Dawson with The Province broke the story 11 years ago and wrote a book on the case, Justice for Jassi. He spoke to Jassi’s widow, a rickshaw driver who lives in India, immediately after news of the charges broke Friday evening.

“He’s fine,” Dawson told News1130. “He’s a little emotional about the whole issue because he’s been fighting for this for the last 11 years, and it’s not only because – I mean – they tried to kill him, and then after that they tried to kill him several times because they didn’t want him to testify in the trial in India.”

He says in his 30 years of reporting this was one of the most tragic cases he ever covered, because Jassi’s only crime was falling in love with a man from a lower caste.

“When we talk about innocence in a crime, I mean, this girl had nothing to do with anything,” he explained. “She was being offered up for marriage because they  had another guy who wanted to come to Canada, and she was being offered up as a passport bride, and when she fell in love with this poor rickshaw driver, everything went haywire.”

He said almost 6,000 people have signed an online petition calling for justice for the young bride.

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