Mother of Indian student killed in Australia tells court she is ‘tormented’

Melbourne: The mother of a 21 year-old Indian nursing student, who was brutally murdered and dumped in a shallow grave in 2021, told a South Australian court that she remains “tormented by her daughter’s death and will never forgive the killer”.

Jasmeen Kaur was stalked and abducted by Tarikjot Singh, 23, from her aged care workplace in North Plympton in 2021 and driven to Flinders Ranges where she was murdered and buried in a shallow grave.

Tarikjot Singh, who pleaded guilty to murder in February this year, was obsessed with Jasmeen Kaur and wanted to marry her, according to the victim’s mother Rashpal Kaur Gathwal.

Rashpal Kaur told the court in a victim impact statement that she was “tormented at the thought” of what her daughter, Jasmeen Kaur, endured in her final moments, ABC News reported.

“I go through a terrible sequence of events, I wonder when she realised she was in mortal danger,” the statement, which was read out by the prosecutors in the court last week, said.

“There was no one to rescue her, she spent her last hour on this earth with the worst of humanity,” the heartbroken mother told the court.

Rashpal Kaur told the court that Tarikjot Singh was obsessed with Jasmeen Kaur, who refused him “one hundred times”, and that she would never forgive him for what he had done.

“How can you value a human life so cheaply?” I can’t comprehend it. You treated my daughter like she was nothing and disposed of her as (if) she was rubbish,” she said, as per ABC News.

Jasmeen Kaur had been living with her relatives in Adelaide and was working as an aged care worker while studying to become a nurse. She was reported missing by them when her employer called her family to ask about her absence from the shift.

According to the police, Jasmeen Kaur was “taken by force” by a man after finishing her shift at Southern Cross Homes in North Plympton just before 10 p.m. on March 5, 2022.

The matter will return to court for sentencing submissions in July.

In South Australia, murder carries a mandatory minimum 20-year non-parole period.