Man convicted after fatally stabbing wife of more than 20 years in Abbotsford

ABBOTSFORD — A man involved in a domestic homicide more than two years ago has now been convicted of second-degree murder.

On March 15, 2024, Abbotsford police attended to a home on Wagner Drive and found the victim, 41-year-old Balwinder Kaur, unresponsive and “lying in a pool of blood”.

She succumbed to her injuries in hospital.

Her husband, Jagpreet Singh, was then arrested and charged with second-degree murder two days later.

Court documents show Singh and Kaur were married for over 20 years when Kaur immigrated from India in 2022 to help their daughter, who moved to Canada for university.

While Kaur filed the paperwork to request Singh’s visa, she had reportedly told a coworker that she was afraid of her husband and did not want him to come to Canada.

He arrived in Abbotsford less than a week before the incident, on March 9, 2024.

A fatal marital dispute

On the evening of Kaur’s killing, the pair had been in a dispute that may have begun with her telling him to get a job and led to him punching her in the face – which the court heard was a culmination of his anger from her “disobedience” when he tried to forbid her from going to work earlier in the morning, her physical and emotional rejection of him, and an unpaid debt.

“It is clear from Mr. Singh’s evidence that he was aware Ms. Kaur did not want to make him a priority, and on the night of the attack, he was angered by her conduct to the degree that he subjected her to profanity, insults, and unprovoked physical violence,” said B.C. Supreme Court Justice Andrea Ormiston in her decision.

Singh told the court that as a result, his wife grabbed a knife and started swinging at him, at which point he grabbed another knife and “accidentally poked her” in the stomach in self-defence.

He then blacked out and maintains he has no memory of Kaur being killed, adding that he did not want to kill her.

She had seven wounds to her neck and chest, including one injury in which the knife stabbed right through her heart.

Singh argued that he should receive a lesser charge of manslaughter, but Ormiston found that the Crown had disproven that claim.

“While Ms. Kaur may have angered Mr. Singh by trying to cut him out of her life or by being disobedient, this was not a situation where Ms. Kaur’s conduct can reasonably be said to have finally and understandably caused Mr. Singh to lose control,” she said.

“[E]ven on Mr. Singh’s evidence, the previous mistreatment in the relationship could fairly be described as mutual, with Mr. Singh explaining that it was ‘not a big thing’ for him to hit his wife.”

Kaur leaves behind two children.

Singh was convicted on June 16 this year. A sentencing date has yet to be decided.