Selma (US), Jun 17 : Avtar Singh, the former Indian Army officer, who was involved in the killing of a Kashmiri human rights activist and lawyer, Jaleel Andrabi, had sneaked in the US after his plea for asylum was denied in Canada, where he had fled from India in 2003.
Avtar Singh killed his wife and two sons and grievously injured another son, before turning the gun on himself last week in Fresno County in California, the Associated Press reported.
The Singh family lived in Canada with relatives for two years and applied for asylum, but their claim was denied, according to Singh’s US asylum documents provided to the AP by his immigration consultant.
Singh and his family crossed illegally into the US and settled in Fresno County, where Singh filed an asylum case for himself in 2011.
Singh lived quietly in California initially, working at a truck wash and at a sandwich shop. He eventually started a trucking business. Sikh community members in Fresno said that Avtar Singh did not hide that he was an Indian army major, but he omitted the salient detail that he was wanted for a murder in his occupied Kashmir.
In 2007, was detained by immigration agents after Immigration and Customs Enforcement had received an anonymous letter stating that Singh may have committed fraud to obtain legal status in the US, said ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice. At the time, Kice said, ICE did not know about Singh’s murder charges. He was again arrested in 2011 on domestic violence charges but was later release on bail.
