Kamal Ghorui
As the trial of the three Indian men accused of killing an elderly couple in BC begins, Crown prosecutor Dorothy Tsui said they were motivated by “debt, financial pressure and greed”. The couple — Arnold and Joanne De Jong — were found dead in their home on May 9, 2022. Three Indian men, Gurkaran Singh, Abhijeet Singh and Khushveer Singh Toor, cleaned the couple’s home room and gutters months before they hatched the plan to murder. After killing the couple, they took their credit cards, cheques and pressure washer. Abhijeet Singh ran a cleaning company and the company worked on the couple’s home in July 2021 and April 2022.
Gurkaran Singh and Khushveer Singh Toor both deposited cheques for more than $5,000 into their bank accounts, purportedly signed by Joanne De Jong, shortly after the murders.The Crown prosecutor said Gurkaran came to Canada on a student visa less than a month before the killing. He was supposed to go to Northern Lights College in Dawson Creek, BC but he never went to college.Soon after the murder, the three men fled British Columbia and rented a basement apartment in Surrey, where they lived together until their arrest in 2022. They have pleaded not guilty to the first-degree murder charges that they are facing. The trial began Monday and is scheduled for 40 days, where the Crown expects to call at least 24 witnesses. There will be a “substantial body of circumstantial evidence” linking the three men to the murders, including fingerprints, DNA on a weapon used in the murder found in the trunk of a car they used, cellphone records, financial records and evidence from electronic devices, the Crown prosecutor said.
