Doctor denied bail in murder case
Portrait of a mother’s misery: Downcast face, eyes firmly shut throughout, each hand clasped by a supportive woman to the right, a supportive woman to the left.
But she couldn’t have shut her ears to what was being said in court, a quite detailed account from the bench of her daughter-in-law’s harrowing life and brutal death.
A son, Dr. Mohammed Shamji, charged with first-degree murder.
Such an accomplished family, the Shamjis: Father a prominent thoracic surgeon, mother a now retired child psychiatrist, two doctor sons.
Dr. Mohammed Shamji, the accused, a renowned Toronto neurosurgeon beloved by his patients.
The victim, Elana Fric-Shamji, a doctor too, family physician at Scarborough Hospital and associate professor of medicine at the University of Toronto. Her body was discovered in a suitcase in the Humber River in Kleinburg, Ont., on Dec. 1, 2017. She had been, police said at the time, strangled and beaten.
The dead woman’s mother was not in court on Wednesday, to hear the decision on a two-day bail hearing held earlier this month. Doubtless she would have looked just as stricken and sad.
It took Justice Michael Brown more than an hour to get to the critical point, as he reviewed the interim evidence and legal admissions that had been put to him, the Crown objecting to Shamji’s release on surety — to be put up by his parents and other relatives — the defence mounting arguments to convince the bench otherwise. In a word: No. Shamji would be returned to Maplehurst prison to await trial. His lawyers have said he intends to plead not guilty.
It is extremely rare for a person charged with first degree murder to be allowed back into the communi- ty, even under stringent conditions.
Yet there was doubt in the downtown courtroom — hope, let us say, for his family — as Brown wove through the legal thresholds that must be met under a Section 522 application: Primary, secondary and tertiary grounds.
These would be the same for anyone applying for bail: Primary, the flight risk factor, whether an accused can be reliably expected not to flee the jurisdiction; secondary, risk to the public if the defendant is allowed back in the community; tertiary, the necessity to maintain public confidence in the administration of justice.
The hearing was under an automatic publication ban.
Shamji wore a blue shirt, no tie and a charcoal suit.
When the proceeding was over, he turned to his father and mouthed: “I love you.”
There is plenty on the media record already, however, in the public domain before the bail hearing began.
The couple, married in 2004, had three children, the oldest only 11 when her mother was killed.
From the outside, they certainly appeared to be a couple blessed by good fortune, enviable professional success and a lovely family. Their social media accounts over recent years were replete with mutual pride and professions of love. But close friends would later tell reporters that the marriage was not as it seemed and Fric-Shamji had confid- ed she wanted to end it.
Police have alleged Fric-Shamji was killed at the couple’s upscale home, located in the Bathurst St.Sheppard Ave. area, sometime between the evening of Nov. 30 and the morning of Dec. 1.
Eleven years earlier Shamji had been charged with one count of assault and two counts of uttering death threats against his wife, when the couple was living in Ottawa. Those charges were dropped when Shamji agreed to a peace bond which required him to not come within 200 metres of their residence without his wife’s consent.
It’s unclear what happened in subsequent months but the couple clearly reconciled, moving to Toronto in 2012.
And then, four years later, she’s dead in a suitcase.
Shamji was arrested at a Mississauga coffee shop where he was meeting with his lawyer Liam O’Connor on Dec. 2.
Outside court following the hearing Wednesday, O’Connor, characterized Justice Brown’s ruling as “a good legal judgment.”
“I don’t have a problem with it and I won’t be discussing how my client is feeling or what he’s told me.’’
Adding, though: “I’m surprised given the level of support out there for Dr. Shamji . . . Dr. Shamji has an enormous amount of support out there. I can tell you from the day this charge was laid I’ve been inundated with support for the doctor from friends, from family, from patients, from people who don’t know him.”
The children, said O’Connor, are now living in Windsor.
“There’s three children suffering in Windsor, I have no doubt about that. But I haven’t seen a story where there wasn’t a second side to the story and that story will be told, I assure you.”
That trial is not expected to begin before the fall of 2018. Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.