Thanabalasingham allegedly confessed to murder before arrest
Trial was placed under a stay of proceedings for taking too long
Sivaloganthan Thanabalasingham, whose murder case was placed under a stay of proceedings last week, allegedly confessed to killing his wife before he was even arrested.
The chilling detail was among the evidence presented to a Quebec Court judge in 2014 during Thanabalasingham’s preliminary inquiry. The length, 11 months, of that complicated hearing is one of the reasons Superior Court Justice Alexandre Boucher cited when he ruled on April 6 that it took the Crown too long to bring the case to trial.
“(T)he case is not particularly complex. This is a typical murder case,” Boucher wrote in his decision, while ruling out a Crown argument to justify the 57-month delay before jury selection was set to begin, on April 10. The potential complexity of a case is one thing the Supreme Court of Canada allowed judges to consider when it issued a decision last summer — referred to as the Jordan ruling — intended to rein in the long delays many judicial jurisdictions in Canada are experiencing.
In the case of Thanabalasingham — accused of killing his wife, Anuja Baskaran, on Aug. 11, 2012 — the Crown had a confession, forensic evidence and witness statements to the effect that the victim spent the last year of her life in misery because of her spouse’s abuse.
“I could no longer take that she hit me. I killed her,” Thanabalasingham allegedly told a friend over the phone just after Baskaran was stabbed several times in the neck and hands in the basement apartment in Ahuntsic where she lived, off and on, with Thanabalasingham in the months before her death.
The friend, Palandram (Balaya) Rasalingan, who testified at the preliminary inquiry, could not believe Baskaran was dead and advised Thanabalasingham to call an ambulance. Rasalingan, 54, knew Thanabalasingham had already been arrested three times for assaulting Baskaran. He was close to Baskaran’s family and had tried for weeks to counsel the couple in an effort to keep them together.
Rasalingan testified on April 3, 2014, that several hours before she was killed, Baskaran had called him and complained that Thanabalasingham beat her the night before. He said Baskaran asked whether he knew of place where she could get massage therapy because her arms and legs were sore from the assault. Rasalingan said he suggested Thanabalasingham massage her instead.
“Anuja said that he had called her a prostitute, so she didn’t want him to touch her,” Rasalingan said.
“What else did she tell you during that telephone conversation?” asked Alexandre Dalmau, one of a few prosectors who worked on the case.
“That if she died, it would be because of him,” Rasalingan replied.
About eight hours after Baskaran called him, Rasalingan testified, he went to the couple’s apartment, sometime after 8 p.m. He said Baskaran appeared drunk and was very emotional. At one point, Rasalingan said, Baskaran pinned Thanabalasingham against a couch and struck him several times while shouting: “Today, I will control you.” It was the last time Rasalingan saw her alive.
Other witnesses at the preliminary inquiry recounted that Baskaran’s final months were spent in misery and abuse. She stayed briefly at a women’s shelter, and had even tried to take her own life. A friend testified that Baskaran said her parents insisted she return to Thanabalasingham, despite the abuse, because her father owed him $50,000.
In the hours before she was killed, it appeared she had enough and tried to turn the tables on her aggressor.
Rasalingan said he only stayed a matter of minutes that night before he gave up on trying to help. As he left, he noticed a few neighbours standing across the street, and assumed they had heard Baskaran yelling. He also testified that as he drove away from the duplex, Thanabalasingham called his cellphone and assured him that everything had calmed down.
Rasalingan said he then went home, took a bath, ate dinner, downed a few shots of whisky and fell asleep. He was awoken by a call from Thanabalasingham, during which he allegedly confessed to killing Baskaran.
“He sounded nervous, so I thought I misunderstood him. So I said that maybe she had passed out, that he should call an ambulance,” Rasalingan said. While they talked, Thanabalasingham told him he had walked about three blocks from the duplex, he added. “I told him to call an ambulance and go back. I never dreamed that something like this would happen.”
Evidence showed that Thanabalsingham then called 911 and, during a conversation that was difficult for the judge presiding over the preliminary inquiry to understand, he said the words, “I tried to murder.”
Police arrived to find Thanabalasingham standing on a sidewalk outside the duplex, holding a bloody cloth. When they entered the basement apartment, they found Baskaran’s lifeless body on the floor.
The Crown has filed an appeal of Boucher’s decision.
Thanabalasingham is being detained while Canada seeks to have him deported to Sri Lanka. He is not a Canadian citizen and his criminal record, for assaulting Baskaran on three occasions between May 2011 and January 2012, leaves him open to deportation.