Andrew L. Urban.
Parwinder Kaur had poured a small amount of petrol onto herself, hardly enough to fill a teacup. A few minutes later she flicked on a cigarette lighter and ignited the petrol. It was intended not to kill her but to ignite emotions in her husband Kulwinder Singh and their respective families that would lead to a – perhaps hospital bedside – resolution of simmering conflicts over what she was doing with her wages. That’s how the movie Gadar that she had been watching on DVD ended. The disc was still in the DVD player opposite the lounge where she had been sitting.
But now Parwinder was on fire. She was running down the drive of her Rouse Hill home, flames and smoke billowing from her. She let out a scream which attracted her husband, Kulwinder, upstairs at the time and two of their neighbours. She had already called 000 and in the ensuing 89 seconds, calmly spelled out her name and address details. She told the operator: “My husband nearly killed me.” She did not say anything about being on fire. That call set off the wrong alarm for police, leading to her husband being charged with her murder.
It was a hot afternoon in Sydney’s Rouse Hill on December 2, 2013, yet Parwinder had put on a red knitted jumper over her casual top. It was meant to offer some protection from the flames. It killed her. Made of an acrylic fabric, it ignited and continued to burn and melt, giving off a nasty smell and much smoke. If only it had been wool ….
Margaret Cunneen SC
But all this was then unknown to the police. The information they had was that a woman had called 000 and when they got to the address, the woman was dying of severe burns. Her husband was nearby, terribly upset and with burns on his hands. You can’t blame them for setting off with the wrong assumptions. Not then. But as details and evidence began to emerge, it became more and more obvious that the assumptions were leading them on the road to a wrongful conviction … if Karwinder hadn’t had Margaret Cunneen SC as her barrister.
At the start of the trial, Cunneen summarised Karwinder’s case quite simply: “Now, there is simply no physical or forensic evidence that supports the Crown case. It is not that there is no evidence, it is not that there is no forensic evidence – there is plenty of forensic evidence and it all points to the only other possibility besides Mr Singh’s guilt; that, for her own reasons on this day, she set herself on fire. Having alerted the police by phone and, as you have heard, she had done a trial run on a previous occasion when her husband wasn’t even home and knowing that her neighbour, Ms Valle, was at home.”
The jury took less than three hours (including lunch) to return a unanimous verdict of Not Guilty. Read the full story of this tragedy as we reported it on April 2, 2021.
Similarly in the Susan Neill-Fraser case……..the facts needed and still do to be properly investigated with no bias or miss information given to juries……….facts are what matters not fiction.
Evidence without motive is like a map without a destination: it may show a trail of events, but it does not necessarily explain what happened or establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
The Rouse Hill case is a tragic example of why evidence must be properly assessed in its entirety, rather than interpreted through an initial assumption. The circumstances confronting police were confronting, and the 000 call, “My husband nearly killed me,” understandably demanded an urgent response. But an urgent response and a sound prosecution are two very different things.
A woman lost her life, and the events that followed raise serious questions about how the case was investigated, assessed and ultimately prosecuted. Even if the police investigation was deficient, the ODPP had an independent responsibility to scrutinise the available evidence, test the prosecution theory and consider whether the case could realistically establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt. This was a case that deserved more rigorous consideration before it reached trial.
The consequences of getting that assessment wrong are enormous. A person’s liberty, reputation and future can be destroyed by a prosecution that should never have proceeded. There is also the considerable cost to the public purse: police time, prosecution resources, court time and the expense of a trial that might have been avoided through proper scrutiny at an earlier stage. Taxpayers should not have to bear the cost of institutional failures that a more rigorous review might have prevented.
The role of the trial judge also deserves consideration. Judges must act within the limits of their judicial role, but where the prosecution evidence is legally insufficient, the defence may make a submission of no case to answer. If that submission succeeds, the judge can direct a verdict of not guilty without leaving the matter to the jury. Whether that threshold was met, and when the issue could properly have been addressed, are important questions in examining how this case unfolded.
None of this diminishes the tragedy of a woman losing her life. It makes the need for a competent, evidence-led investigation all the more important. The victim deserved a proper investigation, and the accused deserved a prosecution supported by a properly tested case.
What followed appears to have been an appalling sequence of failures. The fundamental question is not simply whether evidence existed, but whether it was critically evaluated, whether alternative explanations were properly considered, and whether the prosecution had a sound evidential foundation.
Justice requires more than assembling evidence. It requires the discipline to ask what that evidence actually proves—and the courage to stop when it does not prove enough.