An Abbotsford man who was involved in a plot to kill his wife in what was made to look like a hit-and-run accident has received a 10-year jail term.
Iqbal Gill, 53, was sentenced Wednesday in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver on a charge of conspiracy to commit murder.
He was initially charged with first-degree murder, but pleaded guilty last month to the conspiracy charge.
His wife, Kulwinder Gill, 42 was killed in April 2009.
Gill was one of four men charged with her death and the third to plead guilty.
Evidence already presented in court is under a publication ban because the fourth man – Gurpreet Atwal, 30 – has yet to go to trial on a charge of first-degree murder. The trial is slated to begin in May 2018.
The publication ban prohibits outlining the role that each man played in the killing and the role that Atwal allegedly played.
Kulwinder had been out for a walk with her husband on April 27, 2009, when she was struck by a pickup truck in the rural area of Townshipline and Bell roads, east of Highway 11, in Abbotsford.
Responding officers were flagged down by her husband, who led them to a water-filled ditch, where Kulwinder had been thrown by the impact.
A suspect vehicle with signs of damage was seized by police on acreage several blocks away.
The incident was initially believed to be a hit-and-run collision, but police soon began investigating it as a suspicious death.
Gill, Atwal and two other men – Sukhpal Johal and Jaspreet Sohi – were charged in April 2013.
Sohi, 32, of Surrey pleaded guilty in October 2015 to a charge of being an accessory to murder after the fact and was sentenced to time served plus one day in jail. A first-degree murder charge was stayed.
Johal, 30, of Surrey pleaded guilty in June 2016, also to a conspiracy charge, and received a 10-year sentence. After he was give double credit for time already served, he was left with three and a half years in prison.
