For Sukhwinder Singh, this month marks 15 years since his wife Jassi Sidhu sprung him from jail by declaring her love for him at a courthouse in Punjab, India.
That declaration and her insistence that she had married the man she loved out of her own free will led to her murder and a saga of forbidden love that spanned two continents.
This week 15 years after her so called “honour killing”, the Indian Supreme Court upheld the convictions of three men hired to take out the cultural misfit by her uncle and mother.
The three, including a police inspector, will continue to serve life imprisonment terms.
For Sukhwinder Singh aka Mithu, the ruling is a hollow victory, because his wife’s mother and uncle – Malkiat Kaur and Surjit Singh Badesha – who are accused of hiring the hitmen remain in a Vancouver jail fighting extradition to India.
“I am happy that the persons who killed my wife in cold blood will remain behind bars for life,” Singh told India’s Tribune News Service. “But my struggle for justice continues (until) the persons who hired these contract killers face punishment.”
“I want to come face-to-face with my mother-in-law and ask her if love was such a crime that she got her own daughter killed,” said Singh, who hasn’t remarried.
Jassi was 25 when she was found slain in a canal in India's Punjab state in June 2000 when she was in the country in a bid to bring back her husband, Mithu  whom her family strongly disapproved of.
The BC Supreme Court ruled last year that there is enough evidence to extradite Jassi's mother, Malkit Kaur Sidhu, and her uncle, Singh Badesha, to India, where they have been charged with conspiracy to commit murder.
The extradition case was bolstered by testimony from Jassi’s co-workers and friends. Seven people in India have been convicted of conspiracy to commit murder in her death.
Harbinder Singh Sewak, who co-authored the book Justice for Jassi and set up the website justiceforjassi.com said he will continue to watch the case.
"There is still a long way to," said Sewak who has followed the story for more than a decade and co-authored the book Justice for Jassi.
The book’s lead author is Fabian Dawson, a Vancouver based journalist and filmmaker, who was involved in exposing the so called ‘honour killing’ since 2000 and Jupinderjit Singh, a reporter with Tribune newspaper in Punjab.
The book documents the entire international saga of forbidden love and is narrated from the perspective Mithu, who since his wife’s death a decade ago has refused to re-marry and has continued fighting to see justice done for his wife.
The authors scoured through thousands of police and court records in Canada and India, as well as hours of tape interviewing officials. The book shows how her mother and uncle orchestrated Jassi’s murder from Maple Ridge .
“We kept the website alive, we kept the story alive and we will continue to do so until there is justice for Jassi,” said Sewak.
To find out more on this story and the book Justice For Jassi please go to www.facebook.com/petitionforjassi