Rajwinder Singh’s wife reveals last day before he fled to India after alleged murder
The wife of Toyah Cordingley's alleged killer has broken down in court while speaking about the time after he disappeared to India, leaving her and their three children and his parents at their Innisfail home.
The wife of murder accused Rajwinder Singh has given the jury a glimpse inside the life and home of the Innisfail father and nurse as it was on the day Toyah Cordingley’s body was found on Wangetti Beach, and Mr Singh fled to India.
Mr Singh, 41, has pleaded not guilty in Cairns Supreme Court to the murder of Ms Cordingley on October 21, 2018. The trial is into its ninth day.
Mr Singh’s wife, Sukhdeep Kaur, aided by a Punjabi interpreter, said she had not seen nor heard from her husband since October 22, 2018, but for giving evidence at his trial.
She said that in 2018, they lived in Innisfail in a two-storey house and had three children – two sons and a daughter, aged between one and eight-years old – and Mr Singh worked shifts as a nurse while she looked after their children.
She said she met Mr Singh in 2009 in India a short time before their marriage, which was arranged by their parents.
The couple came to Australia on student visas, the jury was told, with Mr Singh studying horticulture initially, while she packed bananas, buying a house in Innisfail around 2012.
Ms Kaur held her head high as she entered the witness box, spoke clearly and looked around the courthouse as she gave her evidence, mostly in Punjabi but sometimes in English. She looked towards Mr Singh at times, and he dropped his gaze.
As Crown prosecutor Nathan Crane was asking Ms Kaur about her husband’s disappearance from the family, she became visibly upset, rubbing her neck, moving her head around and breaking down in tears.
The judge encouraged her to take her time and she said to the jury in English, “sorry everyone” when she regained her composure.
Ms Kaur said her husband left the family home on Sunday October 21, 2018 to take his father to the temple, then she didn’t see him until the Monday morning – the day he would leave them.
“He said he was going ‘somewhere’ and would be gone one or two days … The kids had school holidays. I said ‘could we come?’. He said no,” Ms Kaur said.
Mr Crane prompted her further, asking if Mr Singh ‘ever came home, tried to contact the children, ever speak on the phone, or ring the children for their birthdays”, to which she replied ‘No” each time.
Mr Singh’s parents lived with them in Innisfail at the time.
She said Mr Singh’s parents continued to live with her and the children “maybe two-and-a-half years” after Mr Singh left, but they lost their Innisfail house when they could not pay the mortgage.
“My in-laws family has really supported me and they really loved me,“ Ms Kaur said.
Photographs of their house, and of Mr Singh with the children were shown to the jury, including images taken near Wangetti Beach in front of the stacked rock cairns by the side of the Captain Cook Highway.
A smiling Rajwinder Singh, with clean-shaven face and trimmed hair, can be seen holding his youngest son in the image.
Ms Kaur was questioned about her husband’s clothes, and she said he had many “lined shirts”; Mr Singh was captured on CCTV wearing a striped polo shirt and shorts on CCTV cameras the day Ms Cordingley died.
She was also questioned about their marriage and their sleeping arrangements.
“Raj had his own room and I slept with the little baby because I had to feed him. There was no reason. He had shifts, day shifts and night shifts, and I had to feed my baby,” Ms Kaur said.
Under cross examination, Ms Kaur was asked if Mr Singh was unhappy in the marriage.
“He did not ever say anything directly to me. Like any other husband and wife, we would talk, and everything would be normal again,” she said.
She said Mr Singh had asked for a divorce in February 2018. She said he also left the family home for around a week in April and she “cried a lot”, asking Mr Singh to return to the family and he did.
“ I didn’t want this happening between both the families – I definitely didn’t want that,” she said.
The trial will resume on Monday before Justice Lincoln Crowley.
Originally published as Rajwinder Singh’s wife reveals last day before he fled to India after alleged murder
