B.C. court upholds extradition of pair accused of ‘honour killing’ in India
VANCOUVER — Two British Columbia residents accused of hiring assailants to kill a relative in India because she married a poor rickshaw driver must be extradited to face murder charges, the province’s top court has ruled.
The B.C. Court of Appeal has denied Malkit Kaur Sidhu and Surjit Singh Badesha’s request for a stay of proceedings and a judicial review, which their lawyers filed as the RCMP escorted them onto a Delhi-bound plane last fall.
Indian authorities allege the pair were involved in the so-called “honour killing” of Sidhu’s daughter and Badesha’s niece, Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu, in 2000 after she married a man from a lower socio-economic class against her family’s wishes.
An RCMP operation to remove the two was halted in Toronto’s airport in September 2017 when Mounties learned lawyers for the accused had filed court applications for judicial review moments earlier.