In his first-hand account of following the Jassi Sidhu honour killing case for more than 20 years, Vancouver journalist recalls how this Punjabi Canadian girl was raped and tortured before her throat was slit with the sword inscribed with the words `Satnam Waheguru’ near Jagraon in Punjab
VANCOUVER: When I first saw Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu, she was on a pedestal, framed in a high-school graduation picture, surrounded by grieving relatives.
The menfolk were upstairs, while the women sat on the ground near the entrance of a palatial home comprising 25 rooms, 19 bathrooms and six kitchens. The family compound, valued at over $2.6 million, across from Jerry Sulina Park in Maple Ridge, had spectacular views of the Coast Mountains in British Columbia.
It was a June Saturday in 2000, shortly after Jassi, as everyone called her, was found dead in a rural ditch outside the industrial metropolis of Ludhiana in Punjab, India.
She had been raped and tortured before a sword, inscribed with the words “Satnam Waheguru” to denote the one true god of Sikhism, was used to slit her throat.
I have been to many of these “next-of-kin door knocking sessions” during my career as a journalist. This was nothing exceptional and the scene at the home was as expected.
What was unexpected were the constant unsolicited assertions by Jassi’s uncle, Surjit Singh Badesha, who kept insisting to me: “We did not kill her . . . I have told them (the police) that our family is not involved in any way.”
Fuelled by the denials, my in-built suspicious nature went into high gear and it did not take long for the full extent of this tragedy of forbidden love to hit the headlines in The Province.
Today, after 12 trips to India, scores of interviews, three documentaries, a made-for-TV movie, a website called justiceforjassi.com and the book Justice for Jassi, Badesha and Jassi’s mother, Malkiat Kaur Sidhu, are facing trial in Punjab.
Based on my investigations, I have long suspected that these two are the architects of the crime. The courts have finally affirmed that.
It is not often that a journalist is able to stick with one story for close to 20 years. I am glad that I did.
I never met this young vibrant woman who was so full of love and murdered because of it. But I know her very well.
Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu was born August 4, 1975, in a clan where men are in charge of family honour and women are blamed for tarnishing it.
Her birth, being a girl child, was unremarkable. In fact, it was only officially registered more than a year later, on August 17, 1976, by her parents, who were more in tune with another of their newborns, Jassi’s brother.
Jassi’s mother, Malkiat Kaur, and father, Bakhtaur Singh, were part of an exodus from Punjab’s Doaba region to the Canadian West Coast that began at the turn of the 20th century and continues today.
Members of Jassi’s clan eventually settled down in the Fraser Valley, also known as Canada’s Doaba, where Sikhism has taken root alongside the farms that produce strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and vegetables worth more than $100 million a year.
The uncle, Surjit Singh Badesha, the undisputed head of Jassi’s clan, had decided that it would be best if the family stayed together to cut its living expenses, maximize savings and show a unity of values.
This compound was also to be a bastion for the transplanted way of life from Punjab and a showcase for the family’s religious practices.
The family pooled its resources to buy about nine acres of land on 210th Street in Maple Ridge to operate a blueberry farm and in the process become millionaires.
Growing up, Jassi’s life was simple and revolved around school, prayers and household chores.
Sometimes she was too friendly with the farm help and her outgoing ways were curbed with a slap and a curse.
This was part of Jassi’s education process, where honour and shame, humiliation and punishment were central to a woman’s life.
For Jassi, school and education were nothing more than a place her family sent her to learn to read and write. There was no impetus for a higher education.
Jassi, after all, did not need a university degree to look after her chosen husband and bear kids. Her mother had done this and her mother’s mother had done this.
Since everyone in the compound had to work and contribute to the family kitty, Jassi took a job as a beautician at the Peaches and Cream beauty parlour in Maple Ridge, shortly after she graduated from high school.
This, for Jassi, was not a job. It was an escape.
Her brother drove her to and from work every day.
Her paycheque was deposited into a common account.
Jassi, at 24, had also reached the age where girls like her become a topic of conversation among family members looking to find a suitable match.
The family held parties with a decked-out Jassi as the centrepiece while mothers and aunts eyed the crowd.
When the parties wound down, the remarks about potential suitors would range from unimaginable flattery to downright cruelty.
As the wheels of this age-old cultural practice turned, the plan for Jassi became clear.
Her chosen husband would be a man of the same, if not higher, caste and socio-economic standing; a man able to further consolidate the family’s wealth and reputation.
The hunt for a bridegroom would move to Punjab, because it was proving unsuccessful in Canada.
It was a simple plan, but it had a fatal flaw.
Jassi fell in love with Mithu from her mother’s village, and for that she was killed.
Today as Jassi’s mother and uncle are under trail trial in India to face justice Jassi’s husband, Mithu, who survived the attack on the newlyweds says he lives with gratitude in his heart for the thousands who have shown him support via justiceforjassi.com, and an unbearable sadness for the woman he loved.
(Based in Vancouver, Fabian Dawson has been a deputy editor with The Province newspaper)
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