Trial against Rajwinder Singh charged with murder of Toyah Cordingley adjourned to February, 2025

A man days away from standing trial for the alleged murder of Toyah Cordingley will have to wait longer now for his case to proceed.

The long-awaited trial of the man charged with the murder of Toyah Cordingley has been delayed by eight months.

Rajwinder Singh, 40, is charged with murdering Ms Cordingley on October 18, 2018.

The Crown will allege the 24-year-old was killed at Wangetti Beach, north of Cairns, where her body was found.

Mr Singh was due to stand trial in the Cairns Supreme Court next week.

He has not yet entered a plea, but is expected to defend the charge against him.

But during a pre-trial hearing on Thursday, his defence barrister Angus Edwards KC sought an adjournment.

Toyah Cordingley, 24, was allegedly murdered. Picture: Facebook

The court was told the defence team had yet to examine a vast amount of police material.

Previously, Mr Singh’s former legal representative Derek Perkins did not apply to cross-examine witnesses when the matter was before the Magistrates Court before being committed to a higher court.

In April, Justice Jim Henry said Mr Perkins’s decision to not explore other evidence was “unheard of in a murder trial” and referred him to the Queensland Legal Services Commission for investigation, which is still ongoing.

Rajwinder Singh has been charged with the murder of Toyah Cordingley. Source: Queensland Police Service.

On Thursday, Justice Henry granted the adjournment to allow Mr Edwards and his team “sufficient further time to assess the voluminous quantity of disclosed evidence, some disclosed only recently, and pursue the lines of pre-trial preparation that may prompt”.

“It is obviously regrettable the application arises at this late stage,” Justice Henry said.

“However, in fairness to the defence lawyers, much of what they have been doing involves the pursuit of disclosure which should have occurred in the pre-committal and committal phase when the case was in the Magistrates Court.

“That is a phase specifically designed to afford the defence proper opportunity to discover the relevant evidence in the case.

“A different lawyer was acting for Mr Singh then and it evidently did not occur then.”

Toyah Cordingley was found dead at Wangetti Beach in October 2018.

Mr Perkins remains listed as a registered solicitor with the Queensland Law Society.

Justice Henry said it was important the defence had more time as the current case was circumstantial with “no direct evidence Mr Singh was the killer”.

“The prosecution relies on a collection of various facts as circumstantial evidence to contend he was the killer,” he said.

“In a circumstantial case, it is necessary not only that the evidence is sufficient to sustain the inference of guilty, (but) it is also necessary that it is sufficient to exclude any reasonable hypothesis consistent with innocence.”

“This decision may be seen as an upsetting development but it pales by comparison to the injustice involved in pressing on with a trial listing when such a trial would not be fair because of the problems I have identified.”

Mr Singh’s trial was adjourned to February next year and is expected to take five weeks.

Originally published as Trial against Rajwinder Singh charged with murder of Toyah Cordingley adjourned to February, 2025