Fighting back his tears and frustration, Sukhwinder Singh changes the bulb on the lamp sitting on the nightstand next to his bed.
He does this often to ensure that the light never goes off.
It shines on a picture of his murdered wife Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu, a beautician from Maple Ridge, British Columbia.
It has been on for the last 10 years.
“This light will always be on until I get justice for my Jassi,” said the 34-year-old Sukhwinder aka Mithu at his village, which is about a 90 minute drive from the industrial city of Ludhiana in Punjab.
With an unbearable sadness for the woman he loved, Mithu led his family in a small religious ceremony this week to remember Jassi - the victim in an international saga of forbidden love that culminated in a cultural murder.
Jaswinder or Jassi was 25-years-old when she was kidnapped, tortured and killed in the spring of 2000 after going against her family’s wishes to marry Mithu.
Mithu, a poor auto-rickshaw driver, was hacked by swords and left for dead after his wife was whisked away.
After several weeks in a coma, he awoke to be told that Jassi whom he had secretly married had been killed.
Shortly after Jassi was found in a canal with her throat slit, Indian police alleged that family members, including her mother and uncle in B.C., paid thugs up to $50,000 for the hit.
The police in court papers alleged that the order to kill “came from Canada” after Jassi pleaded for her life over the phone from an abandoned farmhouse.
They charged Jassi’s mother Malkiat Kaur and uncle, Surjit Singh Badesha both of Maple Ridge, with conspiracy to commit murder after arresting several of the hired killers in India.
Until today, Jassi’s mother and uncle remain free in B.C. despite Indian police allegations in court that they masterminded and paid for the murder.
The brother and sister pair, prominent members of the Nanaksar sect of Sikhism in the Metro Vancouver area, are proclaimed offenders under Indian law.
The family has maintained a decade long silence on the killing other than once saying they had nothing to do with the murder.
The RCMP has only said the file remains open.
The four men convicted of her murder, including another of Jassi’s uncles and a former cop in Punjab are all appealing their life imprisonment terms to the Supreme Court of India.
Some have reportedly been granted bail pending the appeal.
“It is a travesty of justice…I don’t know what else the Canadians need to charge and extradite the two people from Maple Ridge,” Inspector Swaran Singh, the lead investigator in the case told the Asian Pacific Post in an interview.
Swaran Singh met with RCMP officials after the murder and despite the years that have gone by and his transfers, maintains a close watch on the file. He has helped revised India’s extradition requests several times but to no avail.
The evidence, Swaran Singh said, includes 147 phone calls between Jassi’s family in Canada and the conspirators in Punjab in the days and weeks before her murder.
Jaskaran Singh, the Additional Inspector General of police/Counter Intelligence based in Jalandhar, who dealt with the Jassi case when her family in B.C. filed fake charges against Mithu, said he is perplexed at the delay in bringing the key people to justice
“I remember Jassi..she was a bold and beautiful girl with her heart set on marrying Mithu…this was a tragedy for the entire community both in Punjab and in Canada,” he told the Asian Pacific Post.
Jaskaran Singh said a few years after the murder; he visited the Nanaksar temple in Richmond, which was frequented by Jassi’s uncle and mother.
“I wanted to see the faces of the people involved in this case,” he said.
Harbinder Singh Sewak, the publisher of the Asian Pacific Post, which won a prestigious Jack Webster journalism Award for the paper’s crusade to help Mithu, is now preparing to release a book on Jassi’s murder.
The book, will for the first time detail the events around the relationship between Jassi and Mithu and expose certain new aspects of the killing.
“We have checked with police, lawyers and others but nobody seems to have an answer as to why charges have never been brought against the people labeled as the masterminds in Canada,” he said.
Sewak expects the book to be released by the end of summer.
While justice seems to evade Jassi, there seems to be no shortage of injustices that keep being orchestrated against Mithu, who is now a member of his village council or panchayat.
Just as Jassi’s murder trial in India got underway in 2004, Mithu a key witness to the killing — was charged with raping a girl from his village.
Despite protesting his innocence and saying he was being framed to derail the murder case, Indian cops and the justice system threw him in jail pending a trial. Mithu faced 15 years in jail for a rape he did not commit.
Sewak set up a website called JusticeforJassi.com to bring international awareness to the case and hired lawyers in India to pursue Mithu’s freedom.
Using his Asian Pacific Post and South Asian Post newspapers in Vancouver, Sewak enlisted the help of Fabian Dawson, the deputy editor-in-chief of the Vancouver Province and journalists in India to investigate the case.
The investigation showed several discrepancies in the police rape file and eventually shed light on the connections between the “rape victim” and Jassi’s relatives in India.
As a result of the media investigation, Mithu walked out of Ludhiana jail on April 26, 2008, 44 months after he was falsely accused of rape.
Iqbal Kaur, 19, confessed in court she had falsely named Mithu as the rapist at the behest of Jassi’s uncles in India.
Earlier this year Mithu was once against accused by a relative of Jassi’s family in India of robbery.
The principal complainant in the case later recanted her claims, according to Mithu.
When he married Jassi and before her murder in 2000, Mithu was charged with kidnapping and forcibly marrying Jassi. The fake charges made by Jassi’s uncles, were later dropped
“I don’t know when all this will stop,” said Mithu.
“But I won’t stop fighting to get justice for my Jassi…I won’t rest until those who killed my wife are behind bars,” he said.

Thousands of people across the world have expressed their feelings and outrage on justiceforjassi.com. You can too. Here is a sampling of some of the reaction from across Canada

Don’t let wealth, community standing, or cultural differences stand in the way of doing what’s right. Justice for Jassi is still alive, and waiting to be served. - R. Hirschkorn, Vernon, B.C

I am deeply ashamed of the RCMP and of at least two successive Canadian federal governments. I pray that Mithu and Jassi’s spirit can one day receive justice and can one day forgive us. – Joel Tatelman, Toronto, Canada

Jassi was a Canadian citizen, but it appears that in the eyes of Canadian justice she was and is a second class citizen. Had this been a caucasian woman, justice would have been delivered swiftly. – Arshdeep Badesha , Hamilton, Ontario

All she wanted was to live and love. Is that a crime? I think not! – Palig, Montreal

How long does it take to investigate what happened and the Canadian connection in her murder. How much more do they need? – Maggie, Alberta

Give it some time, and I’m sure the RCMP will do whatever it can legally do to solve this matter while always maintaining political correctness and integrity. – T. John, Edmonton