This was no accident. Devinder Singh killed little Rashmeet Oshan, the slight 3 1/2-year-old he was entrusted to care for while her mom was at work. That's what the evidence pointed to and that's the conclusion of a jury Friday. They found the Brampton man guilty of second-degree murder, a conviction that carries with it an automatic life sentence. The time he must serve before being eligible for parole, anything from 10 to 25 years, will be decided after a hearing in front of Mr. Justice David Corbett July 4. Meanwhile, her mother, Ravinder, is left to pick up the pieces of her life without her little girl. No doubt particularly difficult for her right now is the fact that it was three years ago to the day yesterday (June 21) that little Rashmeet died at her Rockrose Drive home in the north end of the city. Just two years earlier, Ravinder had escaped an abusive husband in India with the hope of a better life for herself and her only child here in Canada. But what was once a haven for two is now a nightmare for one. Ravinder Oshan, a woman who told the jury she rarely left her house back in India, has spent her days this past month in a Brampton courtroom, wearing headphones linked to a Punjabi interpreter, trying to understand what happened to her precious daughter. After weeks of testimony, a litany of medical evidence, and a finding of guilt, it is difficult to accept, but we will likely never know exactly what happened to little Rashmeet on that hot summer day in 2005. As Crown prosecutor Brian McGuire told the jury last week, we don't go around videotaping life. All the investigation and piecing together that has been done cannot answer every question. "Guaranteed, you will have some unanswered questions about a variety of things," McGuire told the jury in his closing remarks Thursday. "There is no way a criminal trial can reproduce the past." Indeed, Rashmeet's death was a mystery right from the start. Singh told police he found her in the backyard inflatable swimming pool, so it was thought she had drowned. Until the autopsy revealed the abhorrent truth— her back was snapped in half and her aorta ripped in two. She died of massive internal bleeding. It is impossible to imagine how anyone could inflict such brutality on a defenseless little girl. The image of a child being bent over backwards, "folded in half", over Singh's knee or over the arm of a couch, is likely embedded in the jurors' memories, a picture painted by the Crown and forensic pathologist Dr. David Chiasson. During his closing remarks to the jury, McGuire pulled out a 36-inch ruler and pointed out that Rashmeet was just 36 inches tall and only 26 1/2 pounds— a mere wisp of a child. Only Singh knows what really happened that day, and the jury didn't buy his version of events. Singh had physically and emotionally abused the little girl in the past, her mother testified. He slapped her, pinched her, and sent her away from the dinner table, saying he did not like the way she looked at him. One day, Ravinder Oshan came home from work to find that Rashmeet's arm was broken, she told the jury. Singh told her the little girl fell from an indoor baby swing. Another time, she told court, Rashmeet was upstairs crying and the noise angered Singh. He went upstairs, grabbed her, and dragged her down, kicking her as she lay at the bottom of the staircase. She was told not to take her to a doctor because the police would become involved. Ravinder was dependent on Singh for a roof over her head, so she did as he asked, court heard. We all-too-regularly hear about the senseless violence on our city's streets- gunshot murders, knifings- but rarely do we get a glimpse into the brutality that occurs behind closed doors, the violence inflicted by those closest to the victims. If the jury's verdict is justice for Rashmeet, let's hope her devastated mother can start to heal now. And if it is a wakeup call to others, then perhaps Rashmeet will have helped prevent other children from meeting an equally horrible fate.
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