CBC News: the fifth estate - The Murdered Bride

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Aired February 1,
2006 at 9pm
on CBC-TV

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REPORTER: Bob McKeown
PRODUCER: Claude Vickery

WEB EXCLUSIVE: WEDDING PHOTOGALLERY

See photos from Jassi and Mittoo's secret engagement and wedding. MORE

THE MURDERED BRIDE

Jassi Sidhu was a beautiful and wealthy woman who fell in love with the wrong man.

Her name was Jassi Kaur Sidhu. She was shy, modest and stunningly beautiful. She came to the Punjab with her wealthy Canadian family looking for a little adventure.

During a visit to the village where her parents were born she met and fell in love with the man of her dreams, Mittoo Singh Sidhu. But, Mittoo had no money and no land. His only income came from driving an auto rickshaw.

Jassi knew that her wealthy Canadian family would never approve of Mittoo, so the couple married in secret. When Jassi's uncle found out he was enraged. In his eyes Jassi had disgraced and dishonoured her family.

A TRAGIC DEATH

A few months after the marriage, Jassi and Mittoo were ambushed by a gang of men. Mittoo was left for dead. Jassi was kidnapped, brutally murdered and on June 9, 2000 was found in an irrigation ditch with her throat cut. The Indian police eventually charged 13 people in the murder plot, including Jassi's mother and uncle in Canada.

Jassi's uncle was bitterly opposed to her marriage to Mittoo, a poor rickshaw driver.

Phone records showed that the killers had been in constant contact with Jassi's uncle in the weeks before Jassi's death, including phone calls on the very day Jassi died. The police say that the final order to kill Jassi had been given by Jassi's own mother during a cell phone on the evening of June 8.

So, an unlikely romance between a wealthy girl from Canada and a poor villager from the Punjab turned into a modern day Romeo and Juliet story complete with betrayal, treachery, torture, kidnapping and murder. In 2001, the fifth estate went to India to investigate Jassi's murder and produced an award-winning documentary called The Murdered Bride.

THE FIFTH ESTATE RETURNS TO INDIA

This updated version of The Murdered Bride reveals shocking new details about the five-year-old murder case. The fifth estate team and associate producer Akhil Gautam track down two of the men who took part in the murder conspiracy including a police officer named Joginder Singh.

While Indian police and Indian justice, two systems notorious for their corruption and slowness, have dealt with Jassi's murder and convicted 7 men for her murder, the fifth estate reveals that the Canadian investigation into her family's involvement is dragging on.

fifth estate reporter Bob McKeown found Jassi's husband, Mittoo, behind bars.

And in a dramatic confrontation with Jassi's uncle, Surjit, Bob McKeown asks him to explain how 147 phone calls were made from his phone to the convicted killers just prior to Jassi's murder.

But, what of Mittoo, who survived the attack by Jassi's killers? Five years after her death, Mittoo is in jail, facing a charge of rape – a charge his friends and supporters say is completely false. The fifth estate reveals that the woman who has accused Mittoo in court documents is closely connected to one of Jassi's convicted killers.

JASSI'S STORY: A MOVIE

Before she died Jassi told a close friend in British Columbia that a movie would be made about her life one day and now they have. Murder Unveiled, inspired by this true story of this modern day Romeo and Juliet tale, will air on Monday February 6, 2006, at 8:00 p.m. on CBC-TV.

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