A10 The Province News
Sunday, June 10, 2001
SPECIAL REPORT
Jassi and Mithu on their 1999 honeymoon in India. Jassis life began to unravel that fall when her family in Maple Ridge found out about Mithu.
Forbidden love
One year ago, a beautiful young woman from Maple Ridge was kidnapped, tortured and murdered in a tiny village in Punjab. Her only crime, police say, was that she went against her familys wishes and Jassi graduated from Pitt Meadows married the man she loved. Province Secondary news editor FABIAN DAWSON travelled to India to investigate the life, love and death of Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu, known as Jassi
one room that doubles as the kitchen and dining area. The boys sleep in the other. That was how it was when Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu, the woman he came to know as Jassi, entered Mithus life in 1995 when they were both about 20. The winding, 30-minute drive to Khosa from the city of Jagroan is a road that Mithu would travel several times a day in his MadMax-like three-wheeler, ferrying villagers for about 25 cents each way. Jassi, who was holidaying in India, caught his eye on one of these trips and a romance blossomed. We met in Jagroan she was shopping with her cousins, said Mithu, his eyes misting as he remembered the day. I was poor, she was rich, but we were in love. Jassi was staying with her uncle, whose large, walled mansion was close to Mithus house. We used to meet there at night, said Mithu, pointing to a locked gazebo atop the uncles mansion. Mithu would scramble over a two-metre-high wall to get in. Those few weeks in 1995 were full of their secret meetings. They dared not let Jassis folks know of their secret trysts.
PUNJAB, India he double-barrelled shotgun lies beside Mithu as dawn breaks over the wheatfields in the tiny Punjab hamlet of Khosa. It used to be his wife, Jassi, who went everywhere with him. Now its the gun. It has become his partner. He lives in fear. Mithu grabs for the gun as we arrive unexpectedly at his brick-and-cowpie house. Its the reporter from Canada, my interpreter shouts. Mithu, reassured, explains sleepily that armed gunmen had entered the house a few weeks earlier looking for him. They left several bullet holes above his bed and a warning with his mother that Mithu would be hunted down and killed if he testified against the people accused of killing his Jassi.
The plan for Jassi
Jassi, the first of two children, was born in Maple Ridge to a family whose lives were tied to the fundamental tenets of the Sikh religion. They had moved from India to Canada in 1970 and today run a successful blueberry farm on four hectares near Maple Ridge. The close-knit, wealthy family live in a compound of adjoining houses where the undisputed head of the clan is Jaswinders uncle, Surjit Singh Badesha. The family had transplanted their way of life from the Punjab to B.C., and are well-respected in the local community. Sikhs in Vancouver speak highly of the familys religious beliefs. Jassi was a typical Indo-Canadian girl, balancing her life between strict family pressures and the lifestyles of her acquaintances. Friendly and outgoing when she could be, Jassi went to the local high school. She had a passion for Hindi music. She was close to her mother, Malkiat Kaur, and older brother Sarwant Singh Sidhu, a mechanic. Her father had become sick. On graduating from high school, Jassi worked as a beautician at the Peaches and Cream beauty parlour in Maple Ridge. She loved going to work at the beauty salon, said Sarwant, who used to drive her to and from work. It is the only public comment he has made since Jassis death.
The secret tryst
Sukwinder Singh Sidhu, known to everyone in Khosa as Mithu, is a popular 25-yearold with the looks of a film star. Poverty is a daily routine for Mithu, his two brothers and mother. Their two-room house sits in wheatfields that once belonged to the family but which his father had to sell to cover debts shortly before he died. Today, a well, a cow, a scooter, four plastic chairs, a makeshift stove, a rickety cupboard and a wooden bed represent most of the familys assets. Mithus mother, Sukhdev Kaur, sleeps in
