By Fabian Dawson
Mata Press Service

Ludhiana Central jail is a sprawling penal colony surrounded by high brick walls and manned by about 165 guards.

Like many of India’s prisons, it dates back to the era of British colonial rule, with thousands of prisoners kept in crumbling facilities. The jail built originally for about 500 inmates houses over 2,600 convicts and accused persons awaiting trial.

Sukhwinder Singh Mithu knows this place well.

The one-time auto-rickshaw driver and now local village politician, has spent much of his life behind bars here - framed at least six times by several police officers who have been working with his wife’s family in Canada and India to silence him.

Last week a Commission of Inquiry into false cases registered by police in the state of Punjab, recommended that the cops be charged and the victims, including Mithu be compensated for the incarcerations and the harassment around the crimes they did not commit.

Justice Mehtab Singh Gill and Justice B.S. Mehndiratta, who led the inquiry, said: “We are of the considered view that the complainant (Mithu, a resident of Kaunke Khosa in Jagraon) has been unnecessarily harassed. Adequate compensation should be paid to him and recovered from the police officials.”

The panel had found in total 182 police officers guilty of trying to frame people in false cases.

Those words and the compensation mean little to Mithu, 41, who has always maintained that he is only guilty marrying the woman of his dreams, Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu, a beautician from Maple Ridge in B.C.

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 and marrying Mithu.

Mithu, a poor auto-rickshaw driver then, 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 brutally slain.

Indian police had by that time arrested the hired assassins and Jassi’s uncles in India, and accused her mother and another millionaire uncle in Canada of orchestrating the murder.

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 allege that the order to kill “came from Canada” after Jassi pleaded for her life over the phone from an abandoned farmhouse.

They have charged Jassi's mother, Malkiat Kaur, and uncle, Surjit Singh Badesha, both of Maple Ridge, with conspiracy to commit murder.

The wealthy Fraser Valley farming family has denied any involvement in the incident.

The extradition case is still before the Canadian justice system, after several twists and turns, and the duo are expected to be in court once again this month – almost 18 years after Jassi’s murder.

Of the original 14 charged, including a group of contract killers and a police officer, some have been released. Three are serving a life term.

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 insisting 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.

The system was convinced by the lies told by the “rape victim,” identified in court papers as Iqbal Kaur, and it moved in step with the powerful relatives of Jassi in India to deny Mithu bail.

For 44 months, Mithu shared a small cell with hardened criminals in the Ludhiana Central Jail and fought for his freedom with the help of Vancouver-based publisher Harbinder Singh Sewak.

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 local journalists and a reporter in India, Jupinderjit Singh, 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.

On the afternoon of April 26, 2008, the efforts paid off.

Iqbal Kaur, 19, who accused Mithu of rape, confessed before Additional Session Judge A. S. Grewal in Ludhiana, Punjab that she had falsely named Mithu as the rapist at the behest of Jassi’s uncles in India.

Her younger sister, who also identified Mithu as the rapist, told the court: "I named Mithu under the pressure of the influential uncles of Jassi. I don't know on what statement police got my signatures. Later, when we learnt Mithu had been booked and arrested, they (the uncles) threatened we would meet the same fate as Jassi if we changed our story," she told the judge.

Iqbal said she was raped on the night of August 14, 2004 at her home.

But she did not know the assailant and was coerced to name Mithu as the rapist.

This was the second time Mithu was jailed on false charges.

After Jassi’s family in B.C. found out that she had secretly married Mithu, they lodged a police report claiming that he had forced the marriage at gunpoint. Forced marriages are illegal in India.

Mithu was arrested and thrown in jail. Jassi escaped from her family in Maple Ridge and fled to India to secure his release. Shortly after, Jassi's body was found in a canal with its throat slit.

Since then, Mithu has been accused of robbery, fraud, drug use and even terrorism as his wife’s family tried to silence his testimony.

He has beaten all the cases continues to seek justice for his Jassi.

Fabian Dawson, the former deputy editor-in-chief of the Vancouver Province broke the story of the Jassi muder case in June 2000. He is the lead author of the book Justice for Jassi, alongside Harbinder Singh Sewak and Jupinderjit Singh. Dawson has helped produced three documentaries and a made for TV film on the subject.