News East West
TORONTO: A home feud between a woman and her pregnant sister-in-law in an Indo-Canadian family in Brampton here in Feb 2009 which resulted in the death of the pregnant woman has resulted in 12-year jail in a court here on Thursday.
In their shared family home on Feb 4, 2009, Poonam Litt, then 27 and pregnant, taunted Mandeep Punia, 28 then, for having an affair in India before her marriage to Skinder Punia.
This taunt angered Mandeep who stabbed Poonam in the neck with a box cutter. Poonam, who was holding her two-year-old daughter, fell to the ground, bleeding to her death. Mandeep never called 911 and left Poonam bleed to death.
Mandeep and her husband Skinder Punia wrapped Poonam’s body in a plastic sheet and dumped it in the wooded area in the nearby Caledon forest. Poonam’s husband Manjinder Litt was in India when she was stabbed to death.
To hide their crime, Mandeep and her husband Skinder Punia and her father Kulwant Litt floated the story that Poonam had gone missing while on her way to her job at a nearby dental office.
But their crime was uncovered when the skeletons of Poonam’s body were recovered in 2012. Mandeep, her husband and Poonam’s father-in-law Kulwant Litt were arrested on the basis of forensic evidence.
While Mandeep’s husband has already been sentenced to seven years, she was jailed to 12 years by a Brampton court on Thursday. Since she has been in jail since 2012, Mandeep will serve reduced sentence of six years and six months in jail. She was convicted in this case in April this year.
Sentencing Mandeep, Judge Steve Coroza cleared her of severer charges of second-degree murder, rejecting the prosecution argument that she intended to kill Poonam Litt.
But the judge agreed that “Mandeep knew that stabbing Poonam would certainly cause her significant bodily harm.’’
Mandeep, who is the mother of two children, pleaded for mercy from the judge. “I’m also a mother of children. Your Honour, I request you, we should be sentenced keeping in mind our children,” Mandeep said tearfully.
But this had no effect on the judge.
Poonam’s husband Manjinder Litt was not in the court as he has moved to Winnipeg with his daughter and mother.
