NRI Rajinder Atwal convicted for murder of his daughter Amandeep

Kitimat, BC, July 2003:

NRI Rajinder Singh Atwal has been convicted of second-degree murder in the July 2003 stabbing death of his teenage daughter. A jury deliberated for five hours before coming up with the guilty verdict for Rajinder Singh Atwal, 48.

The Atwal family's house in Kitimat. It was put on the market in April pending a move to the Lower Mainland, where Rajinder Atwal had bought a house in Surrey.

Amandeep Atwal left home on July 19 without saying a word. Fearing her parents would try to stop her from moving to Prince George with her boyfriend, the 17-year-old just packed her bags and left a note.

Amandeep's mother tracked down the couple before they left and asked her daughter to stay. By the evening, however, her father had decided to let his daughter go. A few days later, the Atwal family left Kitimat for a trip to Vancouver and picked up Amandeep in Prince George.

Todd McIsaac, 19, her boyfriend, thought Amandeep would return to Prince George in a week. but but she was dead .by Wednesday. Police who attended Langley Memorial Hospital, where they were called to investigate a suspicious death, say she died from multiple stab wounds.

Rajinder Atwal, her father 46, is charged with second-degree murder in his daughter's death. She was working at the 24-hour Esso station late at night and Rosario's restaurant.At

At Mount Elizabeth Secondary School, where the couple had just graduated, everyone knew about the nearly three-year-long romance except Amandeep's parents."They were always together, always holding hands in the high school hall, driving together.Amandeep feared her parents would disapprove of her dating outside the Sikh community.

The secret was out when Amandeep got into a car crash in June and her boy friend Todd by her side. Friends who attended the same Sikh temple as the Atwals say the loving, tight-knit family didn't have a problem with Amandeep dating outside the community. Amandeep's older brother, Nawinder, at one time had a white girlfriend the family knew about.

Rajinder Atwal] was very lenient, a very gracious father," said Prithipal Chhina. "He was an active, moderate Sikh." Amandeep loved hip-hop and R&B music, sweet girl and would often go to the gym with her father, an enthusiastic weightlifter.

Members of the Sikh temple said Rajinder had bought a house in Surrey and was planning to move the family there. Their modest Kitimat home with pale pink siding and white stucco was put up for sale in April.

Rajinder was working, a senior cell operator with Alcan, while his three children and wife lived in the Lower Mainland, where they have many relatives.

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