Police and ambulance staff attend the death of Farzana Yaqubi (left) in Massey, Auckland, in 2022. She was stabbed to death by Kanwarpal Singh (inset).
Kanwarpal Singh harassed and stalked 21-year-old law student Zana Yaqubi for years, at one point threatening to kidnap her and give her “365 days to love me”.
Despite her pleading with him to leave her alone, and reporting him to police, he persisted and told her, “I will never let you win”.
In the end, he stabbed her to death with a large knife in an alleyway near her Massey, West Auckland, home after ambushing her on her commute home from work.
When asked later to reflect upon Yaqubi’s death, he said he wasn’t happy about what had happened, “even though it is not my fault”.
Because of that, he told a clinical psychologist there was no need for him to feel remorse.
A Court of Appeal decision, released today, details Singh’s state of mind after he filed the psychologist’s report to the court in a bid to get his prison sentence reduced.
Farzana, or “Zana”, Yaqubi came to New Zealand as a 2-year-old with her mother and siblings.
She came to join her father, one of the Tampa refugees who were given safe haven in this country after escaping war-torn Afghanistan.
“Ms Yaqubi flourished in New Zealand,” Justice David Johnstone said when Singh was sentenced for murder in the High Court at Auckland in 2023.
“She was smart and independent. She did well at school and started working part-time at age 14.”
When she died in December 2022, Yaqubi had just finished her third year of study at the law school at Auckland University of Technology (AUT).
“She should have had a rich and fulfilling life ahead of her,” Judge Johnstone said.
However, while going to or from AUT, or possibly on Queen St, Auckland, where Singh worked as a security guard, she came to his attention.
He engaged her in conversation and she agreed to sit down with him for a coffee.
From that point on, his social media onslaught of her began.
Yaqubi blocked his Instagram messages but he responded during 2021 and 2022 by creating new accounts to contact her.
He threatened to kidnap her and give her a year to fall in love with him, apparently mirroring the plot of a 2020 Netflix thriller, 365 Days.
Singh also threatened to throw acid in her face.
On December 5, 2022, Yaqubi noticed Singh following her at a shopping mall and sought help from a security officer.
Singh responded by sending her a video he had taken outside her home.
Yaqubi pleaded with Singh to stop, then went to the police, first filing a complaint online and then in person at the Henderson police station.
She provided police with screenshots of his threatening messages.
An Independent Police Conduct Authority report later found police systems for logging stalking reports were not fit for purpose and it had failed to link her with another young woman who had complained about Singh.
On December 19, 2022, Yaqubi caught a bus home from working at an outlet store at the Westgate shops, then walked along an alleyway towards her home.
Singh was waiting and approached her with a knife in hand.
She tried to call police on her phone but he stabbed her 12 times in the stomach and chest.
Four of the wounds individually could have been fatal. Yaqubi died where she fell.
A review of the evidence in Singh’s murder case showed he had been thinking about killing Yaqubi for months – as early as July 10, 2022.
Police found him at his home the day after the murder.
When he appealed against his sentence, Singh’s lawyers provided the Court of Appeal with a new psychological report.
It said that the convicted man was “severely personality disordered” – narcissistic, obsessional, histrionic, with anti-social attitudes.
“Seemingly [he has] an attitude that he can do whatever he wants, and whatever it takes to get what he wants, even ... at the expense of others or society.”
Singh’s view of the relationship he believed he had with his victim was “seriously distorted”.
Possibly, he had delusions of erotomania – the belief that another person is in love with someone “when they are clearly not”.
“Mr Singh lacked the capacity to love any person in a healthy way and his obsessive behaviour towards the victim was more about him wanting to be right, and win, than pursuing somebody he really cared for,” the appeal court’s summary of the report said.
But, in the psychologist’s opinion, when Singh stabbed his victim he was no longer thinking she loved him but was angry with her for – in his mind – “leading him on”.
Misguidedly, he wanted to hold her to account for doing so.
Despite Singh’s bid to get his sentence reviewed in light of the new report, the Court of Appeal justices turned him down.
“We do not accept that the report identifies any factors which could be considered to diminish Mr Singh’s moral culpability,” they said.
“Indeed, in our view, the report identified factors emphasising the need for accountability and denunciation.”
When interviewed for the report, Singh still felt Yaqubi had somehow mistreated or “manipulated” him and was ruminating or obsessing in the time before he killed her.
He continued to shift the blame to his victim.
“He presented with some extraordinary views,” the appeal court said.
“Such as the victim’s family should apologise to him; and if others had intervened, ‘he’ could have prevented the murder.”
At the time of the sentencing, Singh was 30 years old.
He had been brought up in India, where his parents adhered to a traditional and conservative form of the Sikh religion, although he himself later converted to Islam.
A cultural report maintained that Singh grew up accepting it was normal for his father to engender respect through violence and threats of violence.
Singh blamed his parents for his actions too – he considered the violence he was exposed to as a child as partly to blame for the murder he committed.
Singh’s visitor permit, allowing him to be in New Zealand, expired about six months before he killed Yaqubi.
He remains in prison for life, with no prospect of parole for 17 years.
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of frontline experience as a probation officer.