Abbotsford woman’s husband pleads guilty to role in death plot
A 53-year-old Abbotsford man has pleaded guilty to plotting to kill his wife more than eight years ago.
Iqbal Singh Gill was charged in 2013 with conspiracy to commit murder and first-degree murder after his wife Kulwinder Kaur Gill was struck by a truck on Towns-hipline Road in Abbotsford on April 27, 2009.
Gill was strolling alongside his 42-year-old wife at the time she was struck. He flagged down police and led them to a ditch where her body was found. Emergency responders were unable to revive her.
A truck believed to have been used in the crime was found about 90 minutes later.
The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team announced Friday that Gill had entered a guilty plea to one of the charges in a New Westminster courtroom. The murder charge was stayed.
A sentencing hearing for Gill will start on Nov. 1
“In partnership with Crown Counsel and the Abbotsford Police Department, three men have been prosecuted and are serving sentences for their roles in the murder of Kulwinder Gill,” IHIT Cpl. Meghan Foster said Friday.
Foster said that after Kulwinder was struck, investigators determined that something more nefarious than an accident had happened.
IHIT was called in to lead the murder investigation.
“After a very involved four-year investigation IHIT, in partnership with Abbotsford Police Department and RCMP on a national level, secured charges on four individuals including Mrs. Gill’s husband,” Foster said.
As the time of the charges, Abbotsford police revealed that the victim had made a 911 call in February 2006 after a domestic incident, but then hung up the phone.
When police arrived, she told them there was a verbal altercation and nothing more.
Two of Gill’s co-accused, Sukhpal Johal and Jaspreet Sohi, earlier pleaded guilty.
Johal was sentenced in July 2016 to three and a half years in jail on top of time served after admitting he conspired to commit murder.
And Jaspreet Sohi pleaded guilty in October 2015 to being an accessory to murder after the fact and received a sentence of time served.
The fourth accused, Gurpreet Atwal, is scheduled to go to trial in May.
At the time of Gill’s murder charge, the B.C. Director of Civil Forfeiture had filed a claim against an Abbotsford property he owned, arguing that it had been purchased with proceeds of crime.
But the suit was discontinued in May 2013.
Gill pleaded guilty in New York state in 1997 to conspiracy to distribute heroin.