Poison (38 page)

Korol was furious. Either Rai Singh was evil, thought Korol, or stupid—so f—ing stupid! Korol and Dhinsa checked out a 15-seat van from the police car pool and headed for Toronto. With Korol at the wheel, Dhinsa phoned a contact in Immigration.

“Jackie? Kevin Dhinsa. Long story, but we’re expecting witnesses to arrive on KLM Flight 691. Can you help organize a party to meet them and take them through immigration? I’ll be there to point them out to you. You’ll need to contact the pilot, as well.”

Korol phoned the RCMP at the airport and filled them in, asked them to be ready to meet the plane as well. The rest of the drive passed in silence. The partners said nothing, staring ahead at the long ribbon of blacktop. All the work, interviews, research, travel, preparation. It was all at risk.

In India, the assistant lifted the perspiring chrome water pitcher and refilled the glass for Mr. Rupin Sharma. Sharma had helped expedite the process of sending witnesses to Canada for Dhillon’s trial. Things were rushed a bit, but everything seemed to go smoothly. He was deputy director for Interpol’s New Delhi office, located in the salmon-colored CBI building, Block 4, ground floor. The phone rang and Sharma’s assistant answered. It was the Canadian High Commission. Pierre Carrier had retired as RCMP liaison officer. Dan Ouellette, who had succeeded him, was on the phone. Ouellette had just spoken to Warren Korol. Korol was livid.

The assistant handed Sharma the receiver. He frequently spoke with Ouellette. This time, the easygoing Ouellette’s voice was on edge. Rupin, everyone is getting burned on this one. How could it happen? Who was behind the ruse? Was it Subhash Kundu, the CBI inspector who helped arrange for the witnesses to go to Canada? No, it couldn’t have been. Kundu is clean.

Sharma could barely believe what he was hearing. His English was serviceable, but was he misunderstanding? Impostors? The witnesses sent to Canada were impostors? Ajmer Singh? Budram Singh? How? What about the trial? Sweat beading on his forehead, Rupin Sharma took a long drink of water. The air conditioner
rattled as it labored in the window, a metal fan whirred on a table, both fighting a losing battle against the heat.

The captain’s voice came across the intercom aboard the KLM jet. “Your attention please, ladies and gentlemen. Upon arrival would all passengers please stay in your seats for a few moments? There is an immigration matter to tend to. Thank you.”

The jet landed and taxied to a stop at the gate. The door opened. Four Canadian immigration officials came along, accompanied by two large men in suits—Korol and Dhinsa.

“There, there, and there,” said Dhinsa, pointing out Rai Singh, his wife, and his daughter to the immigration officers. And those two, sitting on either side of Rai Singh, those must be the others we’re looking for, he added.

Rai Singh smiled and waved when he recognized Korol and Dhinsa. He remembered them from the interview in India. They were here to welcome him, just as they had when he had come to testify at the preliminary hearing. The detectives escorted Rai Singh and the others to a secure area at the airport. Korol received a call from Tony Leitch. He updated Korol on what was happening. Bentham had told the judge about Pargat’s claim. Pargat had then repeated his story under oath, that the two men with Rai Singh were impostors and that it was all Rai Singh’s idea. Korol’s pulse raced. He approached an immigration officer named Michael Youngson.

“I’m Detective Sergeant Warren Korol, Hamilton Police. There are two impostors coming through. I have confirmation now. Sworn testimony in court today. Go ahead and arrest them.”

It wasn’t Youngson’s job to arrest. He would interview the men with the help of a Punjabi interpreter, then the RCMP could make an arrest. Youngson questioned one of the impostors. Now it was the other’s turn. See whether their stories matched. The man sat in front of Youngson. He had no idea that the attention he was receiving was out of the ordinary.

“What is your name?” Youngson asked.

“Ajmer Singh.”

“Your last name?”

“Singh.”

Youngson repeated the question: “Your last name?”

“Jhajj,” the man said. It was a common last name.

“Why are you here?” was the officer’s next question.

“As a witness.”

The man wasn’t ready for the next question.

“How old are you?”

How old? Think. The year was…yes, 1962. How old? Year 2000…1962. Simple arithmetic, but it was hot in the interview cubicle and he was pausing for a long time now and….

“How old are you?”

“I was born in 1962,” said the man.

“How old are you?” Youngson repeated, his tone steady.

How old…Quick, think! Nineteen sixty-two, two thousand, that’s thirty-eight years.

“Thirty-eight,” he said, finally.

Youngson thought back to his interview of the other impostor, the one whose passport identified him as “Budram Singh.” The immigration officer had asked the man how long he had known Ajmer Singh. All his life, he had replied.

Now Youngson asked Ajmer the same question.

“How long have you known Mr. Budram Singh?”

“Six or seven years,” he replied.

“Only that long?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any children?”

“Two.”

“What are their ages?”

Ages?

“I don’t know their exact dates of birth,” he said.

“Sir,” Youngson intoned, “they are your children.”

Say something. Anything.

“Nine and twelve.”

“Sir,” Youngson said, “I don’t believe that you are the rightful holder of the documents you have presented.”

“Fine,” the man said.

Rai Singh, meanwhile, lay on a bank of chairs in the immigration waiting area, napping. Korol and Dhinsa arrived to question him.

“We have learned,” Dhinsa began, “that the two men who have flown with you from India are not Budram Singh or Ajmer Singh. Why did you choose to do this?”

Rai Singh said the real witnesses didn’t want to come. He thought the other two men could take their place.

“I knew that we needed everybody,” he said. “I got passports made.”

The detectives next interviewed the impostors. The men admitted it was all a ruse. Scenarios raced through Korol’s mind. The judge might throw out the Kushpreet evidence. It was growing late. The RCMP arrested the impostors and placed them in detention. Korol and Dhinsa took custody of Rai Singh and his family and drove back to Hamilton in the van. They stopped at the Royal Connaught hotel a few blocks from central police station. It was midnight.

Pargat Jhajj and his family were asleep in their room in the hotel. The detectives knocked on the door, waking them. No time to change out of pajamas. We’re going to the station. Now. Korol told Dhinsa to keep Rai Singh’s family and Pargat’s family apart on the short drive. Don’t let them talk to each other. In Korol’s office, the detectives were joined by Bentham and Leitch. They interviewed everyone separately, trying desperately to determine what they could salvage of the case. It was 4 a.m. when they finally went home to try to get some sleep.

In the courthouse the next day, Rai Singh sat in the hallway outside the courtroom, awaiting his turn before the judge. Dhinsa walked toward him. He hated even looking at Rai Singh. The old man said something. Dhinsa ignored it, then stopped and leaned toward him.

“You disgust me, Rai,” he said.

Rai Singh and the two impostors were brought before Judge Glithero. Even now, they changed their stories repeatedly. Rai talked about the deal he brokered, the impostors said they never
wanted to come to Canada, they were forced, had been threatened. An immigration agent in India had put them up to it. Warren Korol sat in court, eyes glazed in disbelief. Lies all around. He knew it was over.

Defense lawyer Russell Silverstein saw his opportunity. A criminal trial is a series of battles. Win enough of them, you just might win the war. First, apply to have all the evidence about Kushpreet thrown out. The impostors had cast doubt on all testimony regarding her death. Second, apply for a mistrial. The jury had already heard some of the Kushpreet testimony, the entire exercise was compromised. Third, seek another venue for the next trial. This trial had been going for two months and had been covered extensively in
The Hamilton Spectator
. The local jury pool had been polluted. Fourth—the biggest move of all—apply for severance; have Dhillon tried separately in the deaths of Parvesh Dhillon and Ranjit Khela. Silverstein could defend his client more effectively if the two charges were tried separately, with different juries, different bodies of evidence.

Justice C. Stephen Glithero had some very big decisions to make. Dhillon sat in court, assuming his look of wide-eyed innocence for the judge. He had a shot. He might even get off. Just as he had always predicted. As for Pargat, he learned the price of telling the truth. Down the road, when he returned to Tibba, the phone rang in his small house. Pargat answered. “You should know that after all you’ve done, I’m sending a man after you,” the caller said. “He’ll hunt you down. You won’t know when it’s coming.”

“Come on, guys, we’re still in this thing!”

In the Crown team’s meeting room, big Tony Leitch tried to boost the spirits of the others. As the Dhillon case went through its peaks and valleys, when some of the team was down, others would speak up. Korol or Leitch would throw out some choice locker-room language. We still have him, it’s not over yet. Bentham’s cool was such that he could say just a few optimistic words and everyone would feel better.

The two impostors posing as witnesses were a problem, but they still had a shot that similar-fact evidence about Kushpreet’s death could remain part of the Dhillon case, or that the murders of Ranjit Khela and Parvesh Dhillon would not be severed. However stupid or fraudulent the heartless scheming of Rai Singh was, it didn’t change the facts. Leitch pointed out that several witnesses saw Kushpreet die soon after Dhillon last visited her, with symptoms consistent with strychnine poisoning, and she had gasped, “Dhillon gave me a pill.” The testimony was real. These people can’t even read, thought Leitch, so how could they have made up the symptoms of strychnine death? “They would have had to study at the knee of a toxicologist to get their stories straight,” he said. Why not just let the jury hear it all, the entire mess of it, the prosecutors reflected—the Kushpreet evidence, the story of the impostors, and allow jurors to make of it what they will?

On Monday, November 14, 2000, the Crown, defense lawyer Russell Silverstein, Dhillon, Korol, and Dhinsa sat in court as Judge Glithero delivered his decisions. It was the worst-case scenario for the prosecution. First, the question of similar-fact evidence involving Kushpreet’s death. Could the jury still decide Dhillon’s fate if they were told about the impostors? Could they, in the American parlance, “disregard” what they had already been told by other witnesses? Glithero wasn’t taking that chance.

It is, he wrote in his judgment, “a troublesome area of the law, namely when and to what extent a trial judge may embark on an assessment of the probative value or weight of impugned evidence.

“However, in determining the admissibility of similar-fact evidence the trial judge must, to a certain extent, invade this province. Despite it being beyond my role to make findings of credibility, it would defy common sense not to brand the two impostors as dishonest liars.... All of the similar-fact witnesses either admit having lied under oath or admit to having lied in statements given to Canadian authorities or have given wildly inconsistent statements at various times. These all raise issues with respect to credibility of these witnesses. The similar-fact evidence is highly discreditable, involving as it does an allegation of an additional murder.”

That was it. Glithero threw out the evidence of Kushpreet’s death, and Dhillon’s alleged role in it. After the Kushpreet evidence was ruled out of order, the other parts of the trial fell like dominoes.