The killing of Gurjit Singh was a targeted, premeditated attack fuelled by rejection and personal resentment, the Crown has alleged.
At the close of 12 days of evidence, Crown prosecutor Richard Smith told the jury at the High Court in Dunedin that the 35-year-old accused Rajinder had orchestrated an unmistakable chain of events leading to Singh’s brutal death.
Defence counsel Anne Stevens KC, meanwhile, told the jury the Crown’s case was “circumstantial”, noting they had “no confession from a murderer, and no witness who saw Gurjit Singh murdered, and no reason why he would be murdered”.
Stevens suggested to the jury that alternative possibilities existed - namely, an alternative person murdered Singh.
On January 26 last year, Singh was found outside his Pine Hill home in Dunedin, surrounded by blood and broken glass, with 46 stab or slash wounds.
He had also been partially decapitated.
Smith told the jury the incident was not a “burglary or a theft gone wrong” but “a targeted attack”.
He said that the night of the killing, Singh’s house would have appeared vacant and that there was “no sign of forced entry into the house” and “valuable items [were] left untouched; drones, drone parts, the TV, laptop, even cash”.
He said the only reasonable conclusion was that “whoever did this deliberately attacked Gurjit”.
The Crown alleges Singh returned home from a pizza party with friends shortly before the confrontation began.
Smith said the attack started in the dining room, where droplets, smears and cast-off blood indicated early knife injuries.
“Whoever inflicted these injuries was determined and persistent,” he said.
“You can see from the scene itself that this wasn’t a momentary outburst.”
Blood patterns traced Singh’s movement from the dining room into the lounge, through the sunroom, and outside to a decking area.
“Gurjit Singh was putting up a fight,” Smith said.
He then made it down the stairs of the decking area, where “finally, the fatal injuries occur to him”.
Smith reminded the jury of “sawing marks on the cervical spine” consistent with an attempted decapitation.
The violence, he said, reflected “not panic, not confusion, but persistence”.
Smith told the jury that while the Crown was not required to prove motive, Smith offered a theory of resentment and personal grievance.
Rajinder, he said, had previously been presented as a possible match for the woman Singh eventually married.
However, he was rejected by the woman, and later learned of her marriage to Singh.
Later, a proposal by Rajinder to marry Singh’s sister was also rejected by Singh.
At the time of the killing, Singh was living alone and preparing for his wife’s return to New Zealand.
Smith described this as a “window of opportunity”.
Smith told the jury that the day before the killing, Rajinder visited several retailers, including Bunnings and Torpedo7.
CCTV footage showed him buying gloves and a knife, though in his two-and-a-half-hour police interview, he never mentioned these visits.
“He’s asked a number of times what he was doing Sunday and Monday,” Smith said.
“He never once mentioned that he bought a knife. Or that he went to Torpedo7. Or that he bought a mountain bike. Why? Because it’s harder to replace small, incomplete truths.”
Smith dismissed the defence suggestion that Rajinder wasn’t hiding anything because he used his own bank card and even signed up for a store membership.
“Until the police had him in mind as a suspect, there was no need to hide the purchases,” he said.
According to Smith, Rajinder only became a person of interest when he turned up at the police station with an unexplained hand injury and “lied about when and how it had occurred.”
Rajinder initially told police he cut himself with a chainsaw, Smith said.
Once confronted with timestamps showing he had no injury the day before, his explanation changed to a mountain-bike crash.
“Really?” Smith said.
He said that doctors described the wound as consistent with a sharp blade, not a fall.
“There’s no grazing. No marks you’d expect from hitting the ground.”
Rajinder also failed to mention significant bruising on his abdomen during his police interview, despite being asked twice about other injuries, Smith said.
The mountain bike itself, Smith said, did not support Rajinder’s explanation.
The Crown says Rajinder’s own movements after the attack further implicate him, as blood from both Rajinder and Singh was found in and on his vehicle, including on a seatbelt, a sun visor and a doorframe.
Smith said this aligned with the Crown’s theory that he returned to his van after the attack, placed items inside, and unintentionally smeared blood on the car.
“It’s a story that only makes sense when you see it all together,” Smith told the jury.
Stevens KC challenged the Crown’s evidence, saying each piece of circumstantial evidence was “a thread - combine them all, and according to the Crown, you have a rope. It’s a nice analogy, but what if each piece is flawed? The rope cannot bear the weight the Crown asks you to put on it.”
Stevens specifically questioned the knife alleged to have been purchased by Rajinder from Hunting and Fishing on the day of the killing.
“There is no evidence that this knife was used in the killing,” she said, noting that Rajinder already had knives at home “that would do the job if he was set on murder”.
She argued the purchase of a knife and gloves that day had a simple, innocent explanation: “They are work tools”.
Stevens reminded the jury that alternate explanations exist, including the possibility the murderer was someone else with a grievance, or even a stranger.
The trial continues.
Ben Tomsett is a multimedia journalist based in Dunedin. He joined the Herald in 2023.