NZ News
Gurjit Singh murder: Rajinder sentenced to 17-year jail term
The family of murdered Dunedin man Gurjit Singh have been emotionally and financially destroyed by his death, a court has heard.
His killer, known only as Rajinder, has been jailed for life and will spend at least 17-and-a-half years behind bars.
The 35-year-old admitted for the first time to a report writer ahead of the sentencing that he killed his former employee.
Singh, 27, was found dead on the lawn of the property in January 2024 after being stabbed more than 40 times.
The 35-year-old killer was found guilty of murder after a High Court jury trial last year.
Singh’s parents told the court they sold everything, including their land, to send their son to New Zealand so he could create a better life for himself and his family.
He made them proud every day, working hard to support and having a “heart that never wishes harm on anyone”, they said.
He was the family’s sole provider.
Gurjit Singh’s parents say they are happy their son’s killer will be jailed for life, with a minimum of 17.5 years behind bars. Photo: RNZ/Tess Brunton
His parents were left with nothing – no land, no savings and no support – after his murder.
Rajinder robbed them of their child, future and peace, they said.
“Our last hope died with him,” they said.
His widow Kamaljeet Kaur said marrying Singh was the brightest moment of her life and he was the heart of their home.
She recalled them holding each other in the airport, unaware it was for the last time.
Kaur said she packed with excitement after receiving her visa and the couple were counting down the days until they would see each other.
His murder turned her world upside down and destroyed every dream, hope and plan they had, Kaur said.
She was left to face the stigma of being a young widow and left her education behind to return to live with her parents.
“Grief has left me emotionally paralysed.”
Prosecutor Richard Smith said Rajinder admitted to a report writer he went to Singh’s house, after earlier purchasing a knife, because he felt poorly treated by Singh after assisting him to create his own business.
Rajinder killed Gurjit Singh in January 2024. Photo: RNZ/Tess Brunton
He alleged he wanted to clear the air and had presented the knife to Singh expecting the man to kill him, which Smith said should be disregarded as another example of the lies he told police.
During the trial the Crown said Rajinder lied to police multiple times and left DNA evidence at the crime scene but the defence maintained Rajinder had no reason to kill his former employee and there was no animosity between the men.
During sentencing, Justice Rachel Dunningham dismissed Rajinder’s reason for murdering Singh, saying she expected he was motivated by a desire to punish the man who had married the woman Rajinder had previously proposed to.
She described the murder as brutal and chilling with an attempted decapitation.
Rajinder had planned the murder, brutally stabbed Singh at least 46 stab wounds, disposed of evidence and tried to create an alibi, the judge said.
She also ordered him to pay more than $8000 in reparation payments – $3236 parents and $5035 to widow to help cover their costs.
‘It’s not rocket science’ – the trial
During closing arguments, prosecutor Richard Smith said blood samples from Singh’s home were 500,000 million times more likely to be Rajinder’s than a random person.
“His blood and hair in the scene. His hair in the victim’s hands, his injury and the thumb of the glove left at the scene. Him buying a murder kit. Him saying he didn’t even know where the victim lived yet here he is searching out a route to the victim’s house on the night of the murder,” he said.
“Apply your common sense, it’s not rocket science.”
Defence lawyer Anne Stevens KC said Rajinder has volunteered to be medically examined and DNA only presented a degree of likelihood.
“The probabilities sound high … just about make your eyes water because the numbers are huge but the numbers do not make certainty, however large,” she said.
They also discussed a love triangle involving Singh, his widow Kamaljeet Kaur and Rajinder.
The Crown said Kaur’s rejection of Rajinder’s proposal through a marriage broker in 2022, her marriage a year later to Singh and Singh’s rejection of Rajinder’s plan to marry his sister were motives for murder.
Smith said Singh was murdered shortly before Kaur was due to arrive from India to live with him.
Stevens said Kaur’s family had approached Rajinder’s family twice about marriage and he had been happily married since January 2023.
“The notion Rajinder was upset, let alone distraught enough to murder a person becomes ridiculous and implausible. A fantasy of the Crown’s,” she said.
Justice Dunningham told jurors that Singh had been violently attacked but it was up to them to decide whether Rajinder was involved or not.
‘I can tell that he is no more’
Singh was in a good mood on the night he died.
He was hanging out with his friends at a pizza party in Helensburgh.
His friends said he was looking forward to his wife arriving from India to live with him and had planned to pick her up from Christchurch.
He left at 10.30pm, which was the last time they saw him alive.
The following morning Dhruval Aery found his bloodied and unresponsive body on the lawn after receiving multiple panicked messages from a mutual friend who had been trying to get in contact with him.
“I can tell that he is no more,” Aery told the court.
Footage from the murder scene showed blood stains, a large broken window and signs of a violent struggle inside.
Singh’s widow said her bags were packed and she was preparing for her new life in Dunedin when she discovered her husband had been killed.
Almost 80 police staff were involved in the murder investigation.
Source: RNZ
Latest News
Opportunities to mitigate multi-million-dollar RNZ budget blowout likely missed – experts
Multiple opportunities to identify and mitigate a multi-million-dollar budget blowout at RNZ appear have been missed, according to the former executive director at Audit New Zealand.
The public broadcaster on Monday revealed a near $12 million shock financial loss after a litany of financial blunders, which will now lead to sweeping job cuts.
The $11.8m loss is more than 25 times the $470,000 RNZ had expected to lose over the year to June.
CEO Paul Thompson took responsibility for the result, and said internal reports gave an inaccurate picture of the finances, meaning the scale of the loss only became clear in October.
RNZ’s former chief financial officer Hilary Parker resigned unexpectedly in early October.
The board said it would commission an independent review into what went wrong.
Independent contractor Stephen Walker, who left the Audit Office earlier this year, said the size of the loss was surprising, as was the length of time it took to identify it – months after the financial year ended.
Supplied / OAG
“Probably more of a concern is that they had seemingly been unaware that they were running up a significant deficit until they were in the preparation stage of their annual report in October.”
Walker said public entities typically produced monthly financial reports.
An interim audit also took place before the end of the financial year, he said, but if the organisation hadn’t identified significant losses at that stage, the auditor could also be in the dark.
“It seems that there’s a real weakness in forecasting and budgeting that’s occurred here and that the monthly accounts, when they’re produced, either haven’t identified these significant variances against budget or the magnitude of them really hasn’t come to light until right towards the end of the financial year,” Walker said.
“And really at that point, there’s no opportunity for the chief executive, the leadership team to take, and the board to take, any corrective action because the year has effectively been completed.”
Walker said the “significant miss” was difficult to account for given it was more than 10 percent of RNZ’s total funding.
He said based on RNZ’s annual report, financial complexity didn’t appear to be a factor.
“This $11.8m loss isn’t made up of one particular item … it seems to have been contributed to by a number of separate expense lines running over budget. So I don’t think it’s necessarily to do with complexity.”
Among the errors, RNZ wrongly counted $2m from land sales as income in its budget. Staff costs also came in $3.2m over budget, including $1.4m in redundancy payments.
Professor at Auckland University’s business school Norman Wong said based on media reports the issues identified were “significant and troubling”.
Supplied / University of Auckland
“But recognising the sale of land as income in their budget is a basic error that one would have expected to have been caught and corrected well before it got to this point.”
With funding reductions at RNZ over the past two years, Walker expected greater scrutiny of financial results.
“Virtually every public entity has had their annual budget reduced. And so you would expect … the leadership team on a monthly basis and board – I’m not sure how frequently the board will consider the information – but you would expect them to be interrogating the results on a regular basis throughout the year,” he said.
Walker said initiating an independent review was the correct course of action and that he’d want to understand what information the leadership team and the board were regularly receiving.
He said he’d “love to say” surprising financial results were rare, but conceded they occured on a semi-frequent basis during his time leading the Audit Office.
“The benefit of independent scrutiny by the Audit Office – and the auditors providing that support to the Auditor General – [is] that the reporting is fairly presented at the end of the year, whether it’s good, bad or ugly.”
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