TORONTO: A 67-year-old Indian-origin man in Canada has acknowledged his role in covering up the 2009 murder of his pregnant daughter-in-law by helping his daughter to get rid of the body.
Kulwant Litt from Brampton, Ontario admitted that he helped dispose of his 27-year-old daughter-in-law Poonam Litt’s body and said that he lied repeatedly to the police and court. Charges of accessory after the fact to murder and perjury were dropped.
A sentencing hearing for Litt, who has been in custody since April 2012, is set for later this month, the Toronto star reported.
On February 5, 2009, Poonam Litt was reported missing after she failed to appear for work. Her husband, Manjinder Litt, was in India with his mother at the time. The Peel Regional Police commenced an extensive investigation and public appeal.
During an argument in the family in 2009, Mandeep Punia, 35, sister-in-law of Poonam Litt, stabbed her in the neck with a box cutter and watched her bleed out on the floor, a judge found when sentencing Punia to 12 years in prison in August.
A jury found Punia’s husband Skinder guilty of accessory after the fact to manslaughter. He was also sentenced to seven years. They both were tried together.
Litt admitted to the following facts read to the court by the Crown: He was home at the time of the argument. He had gone upstairs to get Punia’s husband to intervene, and when he returned Poonam was bleeding. He changed the girl’s bloodstained clothes and hid them in the basement ceiling, it reported.
Peel police’s investigation went cold until February 2012 when Litt admitted to a relative in India that he believed his daughter had killed his daughter-in-law and that he’d helped get rid of the body.
The relative taped part of the call and informed Poonam’s husband Manjinder who went to the police.
Litt would likely be deported from Canada as a result of his conviction.–PTI
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