On the one hand, Singh, in a handwritten letter to Judge Crowley in the Hamilton District Court, had “apologised to the public of New Zealand” for taking advantage of the woman and causing her harm.
On the other, he’d told his pre-sentence report writer the summary of facts was wrong, he was told to plead guilty and the “victim had been giving him mixed messages, flirting with him and fluttering her eyes at him”.
“He admitted he wanted to have sex with her, denied she said no, and acknowledged he had no right to go into her bedroom,” Judge Crowley said yesterday.
It proved tricky for defence counsel Charles Bean to negotiate saying he could only reiterate his client’s views from chats that he’d had with him that he did accept what he’d done and he was sorry.
Singh was jailed for two years and one month in the High Court at Hamilton in December 2021 for the manslaughter of his father Gurnam Singh after a drunken argument at their family property on Valentine Rd, Gordonton, near Morrinsville.
Justice Graham Lang noted at the time his offending was “extremely serious” and the push on his father wasn’t a one-off, but rather the result of a “constant degree of hostility” towards his family that night.
Singh had a fractured relationship with his family in the years leading up to his father’s death due to his use of alcohol and illicit drugs.
On the night of his father’s death, Singh was visiting his parents but was highly intoxicated after drinking whisky all day.
There was an altercation and Gurnam Singh was trying to keep his son out of the house by trying to keep a door closed.
Singh eventually opened it, the pair confronted each other and he pushed his father, whose lower back/buttocks then crashed through a lower glass pane of the back door.
Gurnam Singh suffered a large deep wound to his upper right buttock, severing a main artery. He later died of his injuries.
Singh’s rape offending pre-dates the killing of his father and goes back to 2014, when he was still married.
Strict suppression laws protecting the victim restrict what can be reported about the rape, but it involved Singh forcing himself onto a woman and raping her while she was unwell. She was diagnosed with a serious medical issue the next day.
When interviewed by police, Singh said he had asked the woman if she “wanted to make love” but she made it clear she didn’t want to because she was unwell and for that reason nothing happened.
He said he had given her a full body massage, had seen her naked and that they “fooled around together”.
“He had only ever been polite and considerate to the complainant on that date,” court documents state.
And the stark conflictions didn’t just surround his offending.
They continued in his section 27 cultural report in which Singh described his childhood as “brutal”, how he was a “slave” on the family farm and he was not allowed to go to school.
However, in his latest letter, he described a “privileged upbringing in which everything was provided for”, how he worked on the farm before and after school and had a relatively good relationship with his parents.
“It’s simply impossible to reconcile these two accounts of your childhood, they are completely at odds with each other,” said Judge Crowley, adding he would simply put it to one side and not issue any discount.
“I can’t be sure that you suffered any deprivation in your childhood at all which you describe as privileged.”
Judge Crowley declined discounts for his “remorse”, noting other “overblown emotive words” in his letter “simply to reduce your sentence”.
“I cannot put any weight on that at all.”
He was also “highly relieved” a restorative justice conference didn’t take place with the victim as he thought it would “have done the victim even further damage”, given his comments in the pre-sentence report.
“I refuse to give any credit for your offer of restorative justice or remorse. I refuse to give you the 10 per cent requested by Mr Bean for matters in the cultural report ... [involving] matters that have been strongly refuted by your siblings.”
Singh was jailed for five years and three months.
Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for eight years and been a journalist for 19.
