A former Vernon man convicted of assisting his pregnant wife’s murderer 35 years after the fact has been given full parole.
Paramjit Singh Bogarh, 59, was arrested in California and extradited to B.C. to stand trial in May 2018, decades after his wife, Saminder Kaur Bogarh, was stabbed to death in their Vernon home.
Bogarh’s own brother, Narinder Bogarh, is alleged to have murdered Saminder in 1986. He is now believed to be at large in India. Bogarh was found guilty of helping his brother flee the country by making misleading statements to police in the days following the murder.
Bogarh was originally charged with first-degree murder but pleaded guilty to a lesser charge — accessory to murder after the fact — in Kelowna Provincial Court in March 2020. The plea bargain landed him a lesser sentence of five years in prison — two years on top of the three he was already credited with for time spent in custody.
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According to a Parole Board of Canada decision, Bogarh was granted full-day parole in October 2020, and he now may leave the country if he hasn’t already.
The decision states Bogarh met with Canada Border Service Agency (CBSA) officers who issued him a deportation order from India. He was scheduled to be picked up by the agency in Nov. 3, 2020. The decision notes Bogarh was expecting to be deported, has a home in India and had a plane ticket back to India a few days after the deportation notice.
However, last November, the parole board said the CBSA now intends to follow its legal obligation to release Bogarh to the U.S., where he lived prior to being extradited. His second wife and son are both in the States but had planned to move to India with him.
Bogarh was entitled to an accelerated parole review as a first-time federal offender with a sentence for a non-scheduled offence.
It’s not clear what will happen to Bogarh upon entry to the States, but according to the parole board documents, U.S. border officials will decide whether to detain Bogarh or let him cross the border into the country. That won’t be decided until the day of his release.
As it stands, Canadian or American agencies aren’t disclosing Bogarh’s whereabouts.
Following Bogarh’s guilty plea in March 2020, the court heard the victim impact statements of five of Saminder’s relatives, including Saminder’s son, who was two years old and in the same house at the time of his mother’s murder.
“All my life I did not get to know my own mother, the person who brought me into this world,” he said in an emotional testimony. “Everything about her has always been a mystery to me.”
While it’s unclear from the parole documents whether Bogarh is still in the country, conditions on his parole require him to inform the board in advance if he plans to return to Canada before his sentence expires. Given his record of domestic violence, he’s also required to report all intimate and non-sexual relationships with women to his parole supervisor.
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