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Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu, left, was murdered in Punjab, India, and her husband was seriously injured in the attack on June 8, 2000.(CTV) Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu, left, was murdered in Punjab, India, and her husband was seriously injured in the attack on June 8, 2000. Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu, left, was murdered in Punjab, India, and her husband was seriously injured in the attack on June 8, 2000.

Mother, uncle face extradition in Indian 'honour killing'

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CTV British Columbia: Facing justice overseas
Eleven years after a young B.C. woman's throat was slit in a suspected honour killing in India, her mother and uncle face extradition from Canada - but experts say the process promises to be drawn out and complex.
CTV British Columbia: Brent Shearer in Vancouver
Eleven years after a young B.C. woman's throat was slit in a suspected honour killing in India, her mother and uncle face extradition from Canada - but experts say the process promises to be drawn out and complex.
CTV News Channel: Boris Bytensky, lawyer
Assuming neither individual has a criminal record, Bytensky says the chances of them being granted bail is high. Also, extradition could take up to four years, but he doesn't expect this particular case to drag on longer than that.
Canada AM: Why did the case take so long?
Fabian Dawson, journalist and author of 'Justice for Jassi,' explains how Jassi met and began a relationship with her husband. He also explains why it took so long for authorities to make any headway in the case.

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Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu, left, was murdered in Punjab, India, and her husband was seriously injured in the attack on June 8, 2000.(CTV) Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu, left, was murdered in Punjab, India, and her husband was seriously injured in the attack on June 8, 2000. Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu, left, was murdered in Punjab, India, and her husband was seriously injured in the attack on June 8, 2000.

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Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu, left, was murdered in Punjab, India, and her husband was seriously injured in the attack on June 8, 2000.(CTV)

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Date: Mon. Jan. 9 2012 10:57 AM ET

A Vancouver-based website called "Justice for Jassi" is being flooded with comments from people around the world, after the RCMP announced the arrests of two B.C. suspects in the murder of Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu.

The website is a tribute to Sidhu, a 25-year-old Canadian woman who was murdered in a June, 2000, ambush in India. Her husband, Sukhwinder Singh Sidhu, was badly wounded in the attack but managed to survive.

On Friday, more than 11 years after the murder, the RCMP finally arrested Jaswinder's mother, Malkit Kaur Sidhu, 63, and her maternal uncle, Surjit Singh Badesha, 67, after the British Columbia Supreme Court issued an arrest warrant on behalf of India.

India wants the pair to be extradited so that they can be tried for the alleged arrangement of Jassi's murder.

The "Justice for Jassi" website was created by Fabian Dawson, the deputy editor of The Province in Vancouver, after his investigative work for his book, also called "Justice for Jassi," helped lead to the arrests.

In the two months since the book's release, almost 6,000 people have signed the petition on the Justice for Jassi website, which demanded the RCMP lay charges.

Dawson says it's not clear why it took almost 12 years for the arrests.

"That's the question that everyone's asking and the RCMP is not answering," Dawson told CTV's Canada AM Monday.

"But I do believe that much of the evidence that has been collected is in India and the RCMP needed to corroborate the Indian evidence to present to the B.C. Supreme Court."

In his book, Dawson alleges that Jassi's prosperous family was angry with her for marrying a lower-class husband, an Indian rickshaw driver. They had wanted her to marry a 60-year-old business colleague.

Dawson says Jassi met her husband, who went by the name Mittoo, while on a family trip to India.

"When she was taken to India to find a match, she rejected the suitors who were presented to her and she met Mittoo…. and it was almost love at first sight. She approached him and they hit it off," Dawson says.

After returning to Canada, Jassi stayed in touch with Mittoo and met up with him again when she returned to India for another round of matchmaking.

"They ran away and got secretly married and had a secret honeymoon. She then put in the immigration papers for Mittoo and she was trying to hide it from the family, fully knowing the wrath of the family," says Dawson

When her family learned of the marriage, Dawson says they forced her to file a fake affidavit alleging she had married at gunpoint. That led to Indian police arresting and jailing Mittoo. Jassi's family then confined her on their Maple Ridge compound, where Dawson says they beat her.

She finally escaped and fled to India in April, 2000. But in June of that year, she was attacked, raped and killed in Punjab in June 2000, by a gang of men who slit her throat and left her in a ditch. Her husband was stabbed multiple times but somehow survived the attack.

In 2005, seven men were convicted of the attack, though three have since been cleared on appeal. But many believe the masterminds of the attack have never faced justice.

Dawson say Mittoo still bears the scars of the attack, both emotionally and physically even 11 years later.

"Over the last few days when we have talked to him, he's a little overwhelmed, not only because of that incident, but because he has been attacked several times. Gunmen have gone to his house to silence him and they've tried to kill him in several other ways. And he's always living in fear," says Dawson.

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