By Gurmukh Singh, IANS,
Vancouver : Yet another Indo-Canadian man has killed his wife in the city of Surrey near here.
Fifty-three-year-old Harpaljit Singh Sandhu reportedly shot dead his 45-year-old wife Manjit Tuesday after a family dispute in their rented apartment in the Newton neighbourhood of Surrey which has a huge concentration of Indian immigrants. The couple’s 23-year-old daughter Sabrina Sandhu was also injured in the attack.
Sandhu appeared in court Wednesday where he was charged with second-degree murder of killing his wife and attempted murder of his daughter. Their two sons – Manraj, 19, and Sukhman 12, was left unharmed.
The couple, who immigrated here from Punjab, were living in the rented accommodation for the past two year. Reports say they were planning to move the city of Penticton where Sandhu runs a taxi service.
“This is another setback to the image of the Indo-Canadian community which has been badly damaged by family violence and deaths of our many youths in drug and gang wars,” community leader and retired psychologist Balwant Sanghera told IANS.
Sanghera, who has been in the forefront of a campaign to address issues facing the immigrant community, said, “Unless the Indo-Canadian community confronts the issue of family violence openly, it will continue to plague it.”
This is the fourth incident in the city of Surrey during the past 20 months when a husband has killed his own wife. In 2006, three Indo-Canadian husbands killed their wives after family disputes in just one month of October.
Indo-Canadians constitute about 25 percent of Surrey city’s population of 400,000. These include two MPs – Sukh Dhaliwal and Neena Grewal.
Ujjal Dosanjh, who became the first coloured premier of British Columbia in Feb 2000, is the third Indo-Canadian MP from the Vancouver area.