A wealthy Canadian woman secretly married a poor rickshaw driver in India. Her family opposed the marriage. Twelve months later, she was dead, her husband was left for dead, and investigators said her own mother had helped arrange the killing. Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu, known to everyone as Jassi, was born on August 4, 1975, in Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Canada. She grew up in a wealthy Indo-Canadian family and worked as a beautician. During a visit to Jagraon, Punjab, in 1996, Jassi met Sukhwinder Singh Sidhu, known as Mithu, a poor rickshaw driver. They fell in love. To Jassi's family, Mithu was completely unsuitable. He came from a far poorer background, and they strongly opposed the relationship. Jassi chose him anyway. On March 15, 1999, she secretly married Mithu in India. She then returned to Canada without telling her family about the marriage. The secret did not remain one for long. When Jassi's mother, Malkit Kaur Sidhu, and her uncle, Surjit Singh Badesha, learned that she had married Mithu, Jassi said she endured months of abuse and harassment because of her decision. In 2000, she returned to India to reunite with Mithu. She would never return home. On June 8, 2000, Jassi and Mithu were crossing a bridge in Punjab when a white car pulled up. Four armed men emerged carrying sticks and swords. Mithu was brutally beaten and left for dead. Jassi was abducted. Her body was later found dumped in a canal, her throat slit. Mithu survived. The investigation eventually led to 13 people being charged in connection with Jassi's murder, including the men accused of carrying out the attack and a police officer accused of helping connect them with the killers. Several people were convicted, although some convictions were later overturned on appeal. Investigators in India eventually accused Jassi's mother and uncle in Canada of arranging the killing. Phone records became an important part of the case. Investigators identified hundreds of calls between Badesha's home and men who were later convicted in connection with Jassi's murder. Assistant Sub-Inspector Swaran Singh, one of the officers who investigated the case, described it as an open-and-shut investigation. He said investigators believed Jassi had been targeted because she had married a man her family considered socially and economically beneath her. But there was a problem. The two people investigators believed had ordered the killing were thousands of kilometres away in Canada. Malkit Sidhu and Surjit Badesha were arrested there in 2012, twelve years after Jassi's murder. Then began an extraordinary legal battle over whether Canada should send them to India to face trial. Their lawyers argued that the two, by then elderly, faced serious health concerns and the possibility of torture or unfair treatment in India's prison system. In May 2014, a British Columbia Supreme Court judge ordered their extradition. In April 2015, India's Supreme Court acquitted another relative, Darshan Singh Badesha, of charges connected to Jassi's murder. That decision later became an important part of Malkit and Surjit's legal arguments. In February 2016, the British Columbia Court of Appeal overturned the extradition orders. But the case did not end there. On September 8, 2017, Canada's Supreme Court unanimously overturned that decision and ruled that Malkit Sidhu and Surjit Badesha could be extradited to India to face trial. Even then, the legal battle continued through further appeals and stays. They were finally extradited to India in January 2019, nearly 19 years after Jassi was murdered. They arrived in court in Malerkotla with black cloth bags covering their heads and were formally charged with conspiracy to commit murder. By then, Jassi's murder had become one of the most closely followed alleged honour-killing cases involving Canada and India. There were still doubts about whether the prosecution could ultimately prove that Jassi's mother and uncle had financed or arranged the killing. Other relatives originally convicted in the case had already been acquitted on appeal, and proving exactly who was speaking during telephone calls could become complicated in court. But Mithu had spent almost two decades waiting. He had survived the attack that killed his wife. He had also spent years haunted by the last moments he shared with her. Fabian Dawson, the journalist who first reported Jassi's murder in 2000 and continued following the case for years, described it as a story that exposed family violence, honour-based abuse, extradition law and the struggles faced by some women caught between their own choices and the demands of their families. As of the latest reliable reporting I could verify, Malkit Sidhu and Surjit Badesha were still facing trial in India, more than two decades after Jassi's death. No final verdict in their case had been reported. Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu was 24 years old. According to Indian investigators, her fatal "offense" was choosing a man her wealthy family considered beneath her. ©️SallyWrites #JassiSidhu #HonourKilling #JusticeForJassi #TrueCrime