Radio host attempted murder trial verdict: Duo guilty of knife attack ambush on Harnek Singh

A man with name suppression is on trial in the High Court at Auckland, accused of orchestrating the attempted murder of radio host Harnek Singh. Photo / Jason Oxenham

A man with continuing name suppression has been found guilty of orchestrating the ambush and near-fatal stab attack on an Auckland radio host he didn’t know personally but allegedly despised for his political and religious stances, while another man has been found guilty of helping to inflict dozens of stab wounds through a bashed window of the victim’s ute.

Jurors returned the unanimous verdicts for the duo in the High Court of Auckland this afternoon following 10 hours of deliberations that stretched over two days. Despite their different roles, Jobanpreet Singh and the man with name suppression were each found guilty of attempted murder.

They will both face up to 14 years’ imprisonment when Justice Mark Woolford determines their sentences next month. The man with suppression gave a quick bow to supporters as he was remanded into custody to await sentencing. Several spectators in the courtroom gallery bowed in return.

A third defendant, Sukhpreet Singh, was found guilty by an 11-1 verdict of being an accessory after the fact and was allowed to continue on bail while awaiting his sentence.

Authorities alleged that six men altogether tailed radio host Harnek Singh - under the direction of the man with name suppression - on the evening of December 23, 2020, as he returned home from a marathon four-hour broadcast at the Papatoetoe-based Sikh temple where his recording studio was. Three of the accused pleaded guilty prior to the trial.

Defence lawyer Dale Dufty, who represented the man with name suppression, described Harnek Singh at the outset of the trial as a professional provocateur and purveyor of “clickbait” who was widely disliked among the international Sikh community. But Harnek Singh, who suffered more than 40 stab wounds in the attack, later described himself in the witness box as someone who liked to discuss “Sikhism and misunderstandings in the history” of the religion.

Radio host Harnek Singh was attacked in his driveway in December 2020.

Over the past decade, the radio host has amassed a following of hundreds of thousands - the vast majority of whom are overseas and listen to his broadcasts online. He also garnered plenty of passionate critics, he acknowledged, explaining that his own opinions regarding Sikhism probably fall more along the liberal end of the spectrum while the majority of his critics were more on the fundamentalist or conservative side.

The attempted murder has been described by prosecutors prior to the current trial as having been spurred by “religious sectarian fervour”, a judge at a previous sentencing agreeing the attack was the result of religious extremism or political disagreement.

Harnek Singh's stab wounds number in the dozens as a result of the December 2020 attack.

But during his closing address this week, prosecutor Luke Radich emphasised that the trial was about the bad deeds of individuals, not a “referendum on anybody’s religious views and faith or anything else”.

When the trial began six weeks ago, the three men convicted today were joined in the dock by two others: Jagraj Singh and Gurbinder Singh, both accused of following Harnek Singh in a Toyota Prius, offering encouragement or support to the attackers. Jagraj Singh and Gurbinder Singh were acquitted halfway through the trial, after prosecutors closed their case and the duo’s lawyers argued there wasn’t enough evidence against them for the jury to even consider the charges. Justice Woolford agreed.

Although prosecutors and police presented voluminous cellphone and WhatsApp data, as well as recorded police interviews with the defendants, the case by and large turned on the testimony of former co-defendant Jaspal Singh - the first participant in the attack to plead guilty.

In testimony that spanned several days, Jaspal Singh gave vivid details of the attack while directly implicating the man with name suppression, Jobanpreet Singh and Sukhpreet Singh. Much of the closing arguments this week - by prosecutors and by lawyers for all three remaining defendants - focused on whether the witness should be trusted.

A man with name suppression has been found guilty in the High Court at Auckland of orchestrating the attempted murder of radio host Harnek Singh. Photo / Jason Oxenham

He had a long criminal history, there were some inconsistencies in his statements and he received a substantial discount off his prison sentence for agreeing to testify so he had a motivation to lie, the defence argued.

Lawyer Peter Kaye, representing Jobanpreet Singh, contended that his client was being “set up and framed” by Jaspal Singh so that the star witness could protect his friends who actually did participate in the stabbing but were never charged.

“When you listened to Jobanpreet, did you think he was giving you a load of porkies?” Kaye asked jurors, referring to his client’s testimony that he was at home at the time of the attack sharing a dinner with roommates. “Hardly.”

He described the Crown case against his client as “ridiculous” and “absolute nonsense”.

Jobanpreet Singh has been found guilty of the attempted murder of radio host Harnek Singh. Photo / Jason Oxenham

But prosecutors in turn ridiculed the two alibi witnesses who testified on Jobanpreet Singh’s behalf, insisting they were with him that night even as prosecutors presented them with evidence seeming to debunk their claims.

“You could do this job for an entire 50 years and never come across an example of somebody so clearly trying to fabricate evidence to a jury,” Radich said, describing the testimony of one of the men as “extraordinarily bad”.

The man with name suppression and Sukhpreet Singh both declined to testify during the trial, although Sukhpreet Singh’s wife testified that there had been no strange middle-of-the-night visits to their house - as described by the star witness - on that night of the attack or any other night.

“It’s impossible that would have happened without her being aware of it,” defence lawyer Katie Hogan told jurors - describing her client as a devout, hard-working Sikh with a young family and no criminal history.

Prosecutors had said Sukhpreet Singh gave two of the attackers refuge, allowing them to clean up and change out of their bloodied clothing while Harnek Singh was fighting for his life.

Sukhpreet Singh is on trial in the High Court at Auckland, accused of being an accessory to attempted murder after the fact. Prosecutors have said he welcomed two men into his home after they stabbed radio host Harnek Singh. Photo / Jason Oxenham

In addition to Jaspal Singh, prosecutors called another man who said the defendant had tried to recruit him to participate in the attack but he declined. A third man described having almost attacked the radio host with an axe years earlier - describing the defendant as akin to a persuasive mafia don who wouldn’t explicitly state what he wanted but was adept at making his violent wishes clear.

Dufty acknowledged that his client didn’t like the victim but suggested those views had been exaggerated. He denied that his client held fundamentalist or extreme views, noting that there was no expert on the Sikh religion called to give jurors evidence.

“We don’t know whether their respective views are right or wrong, and that’s the problem here,” he told jurors. “There’s a danger in that.”

Radich suggested the defence was trying to create a sideshow and blacken the victim’s character by suggesting he was so widely hated. Ultimately, he said, it’s irrelevant.

“Even if Harnek Singh were the person that he’s been painted to be in this, he didn’t deserve this,” he said.

Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.