Thaindian News

Wellington, May 7 (ANI): Indian-origin Navtej Singh’s killer, 21-year-old Antilea Chan Kee, has been sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum 17-year non-parole period.

Singh was shot at his Manurewa liquor store by an intoxicated Chan Kee on June 7, 2008, he died in the hospital the next day. He had been handing over cash to the robbers at the time he was shot.

In an emotional high-court sentencing that ended an excruciating two-year long quest for justice, a teary-eyed Mrs Harjinder Singh said her life had been destroyed and her dreams shattered by the shooting.

Mr Singh’s widow, Harjinder Kaur, 35, wiped away tears as she quietly read aloud a victim impact statement to the court.

“In reality our life has been destroyed. It’s as if I’m just living my life as a dead person. No-one can see there is so much pain in my heart.”

She said her three daughters, aged seven, five and two, repeatedly asked her where their father had gone.

“I can’t understand what has happened to me. He was a very good and loving human being and had never hurt anyone,” Stuff.co.nz quoted Mrs Singh as saying.

Relating her predicament in the aftermath of her husband’s death, Mrs Singh told the court her grandfather died “from shock” the day after he heard of the killing.

Coming down heavily on the murderer, Justice Lang said Chan Kee had left a family without a father, son and husband with his “reckless killing”.

“I have lost two members of my family as a result of this incident,” she said.

Crown prosecutor Kieran Raftery said the killing of Singh had been “callous”.
“There was absolutely nothing that Mr Chan Kee needed to do in order to achieve that robbery. Yet he deliberately pulls the trigger and kills him.”

Following Singh’s demise there were allegations by the Sikh community in Auckland of the police delaying the ambulance carrying Singh by forty minutes, though the community did not issue any official statement or complaint regarding the same. (ANI)