- Friday, April 19, 2024
By: Keerthi Mohan
AN INDIAN ORIGIN businessman was on Wednesday (12) cleared of attempting to arrange the £20,000 contract killing of his first wife.
Building company owner Gurpreet Singh, 44, has been found not guilty of soliciting the murder of Amandeep Kaur in 2013.
Kaur died on a trip to India in 2014, and authorities in the country had concluded she suffered a brain haemorrhage.
A jury at Birmingham Crown Court previously heard that Singh had pay Heera Singh Uppal, a former employee, to kill Kaur.
Uppal, who travelled from India to give evidence, said he pretended to be on board Singh’s plan to kill his wife to get a large up-front payment.
Singh reportedly promised Uppal £10,000 after he had carried out the murder with a further £10,000 payment after he returned to India.
Although Singh put pressure on him to carry out the killing, Uppal said he had no intention of doing so.
“My thought was to get the maximum amount of money I could get out of him and go back to India,” he told the court.
The jury is still deliberating over a separate murder charge against Singh over his second wife, Sarbjit Kaur.
Prosecutors allege that Singh, along with an unknown accomplice, killed Sarbjit in February 2018 at their marital home in Rookery Lane, Wolverhampton. The home was ransacked to make it look like a robbery gone wrong, prosecutors said.
Singh denies murdering Sarbjit Kaur.
In an angry outburst in court in May, Singh said he had suffered “mentally, physically and financially” since being charged with Sarbjit’s death.
He said he wanted justice for himself and for his deceased wife. “For myself and my wife. I’m behind bars and I’ve been finished by you guys, the investigation team and the police.
“I need justice as well, justice for me. I pay my taxes, half a million pounds a year. I employ directly or indirectly 50 to 60 people – they’re all finished, my business is gone, my reputation has gone.”
The trial continues.
