New trial for radio station owner convicted in shooting outside temple
The owner of a radio station who was convicted in the shooting of a man outside a Surrey temple has won a new trial.
In March of 2016, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Ball found Maninder Singh Gill, the owner of Radio India, guilty of offences related to the shooting of Harjit Atwal outside a wedding at the Guru Nanak Sikh Temple near 120th Street in Surrey on Aug. 28, 2010.
The trial heard that Gill knew Harjit Atwal and sometimes saw him at community events although they didn’t socialize. But in the months before the shooting, their relationship had soured.
Harjit Atwal, his longtime friend Jaspal Atwal and Jaspal’s son Vikram had been offended by stories about them aired on the radio station operated by Gill. Gill had claimed he’d been threatened by the three men as a result of the stories.
Jaspal Atwal, who was convicted in 1987 of the attempted murder in B.C. of an Indian cabinet minister, was at the centre of a recent controversy when he was invited to dine with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during his official visit to India.
Three weeks before the Surrey wedding, Gill told police he had to attend the event because he’d been asked to give a speech. He asked for police protection.
Gill testified that he was attacked by Jaspal and Vikram near the temple. He said that Jaspal had stabbed him in the his left hand with an ice pick or knife and that Vikram punched him in the head.
Gill told the court that when he pushed Vikram, a revolver slipped out of Vikram’s possession onto the ground. Terrified, Gill said he put the gun in his pocket and fled.
In his version of events, he fired a shot in the air when Harjit Atwal ran toward him. When Harjit Atwal didn’t back off, and seemed to be advancing towards him, he fired a second shot, hitting Harjit Atwal in the hip.
The Crown’s theory was that there was no confrontation at the shoe tent and Gill was not stabbed or punched, with Vikram denying that he had a revolver in his possession or that Gill had picked up such a weapon from the ground.
Prosecutors argued Gill brought the revolver to the wedding, retrieved it from his car during a post-ceremony confrontation with Vikram and fired at Harjit Atwal when he ran toward him.
The judge rejected Gill’s claim that he acted in self-defence and found him guilty of aggravated assault and firearms offences. Gill was sentenced to four years in jail but released pending his appeal.
At his appeal, he argued that the judge had made a number of errors in his assessment of the self-defence claims.
In a three-judge ruling released Thursday, the B.C. Court of Appeal found that the trial judge had misunderstood and overlooked evidence from the accused’s niece, who testified that she thought Gill had told her he’d been stabbed.
B.C. Court of Appeal Justice Gregory Fitch said in his written reasons that the trial judge had also engaged in “impermissible speculation” by concluding that Gill’s injury to his left hand was not a puncture wound inflicted by the assailants before the shooting, as Gill claimed, but a pinch wound caused by the hammer of the revolver used by Gill.
“The cumulative effect of such errors is such that the appellant did not receive a fair trial,” said Fitch. “In the result, and for the reasons that follow, I would allow the appeal and order a new trial.” Justice Richard Goepel and Justice Susan Griffin agreed with Fitch’s reasons.