Defense of protecting her unborn daughter from infanticide won jurors.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Baljinder Kaur, the Yuba City, California woman on trial for allegedly murdering her mother-in-law in 2012, was found not guilty by a jury of her peers last week.
Kaur (39) was acquitted on April 25 and promptly released from Sutter County Jail. Throughout the trial, Kaur’s defense had been that she killed her mother in order to protect her unborn daughter, who could have become victim of infanticide if her mother-in-law had her way. Kaur said that the deceased woman, Baljit Kaur (68), wanted to murder the fetus because it was female.
As an act of self-defense, and to save the life of her daughter, Kaur was forced to kill her mother-in-law with an ax. Kaur stuck the older woman several time, causing a number of lacerations and, ultimately, the blunt force trauma that killed her. The murder happened on October 24, 2012, and Kaur confessed to the killing shortly thereafter; Kaur was subsequently charged with first-degree murder.
Although the case took a year and a half to come to trial, the legal proceedings themselves took a very short amount of time. The trial got underway on April 15, and Kaur was acquitted a mere 10 days later, finally allowed to return home to her children. The jury reportedly deliberated for just over one day before handing down its “not guilty” verdict.
Kaur’s lawyer, Mani Sidhu (a Sikh, just like his client), told local media after the verdict that the practice of female infanticide is not a common practice among Indian American communities. Although the practice is on the decline in India, it is still a problem is several rural areas of the country.
Jurors said they believed Kaur to be the victim of an abusive marriage. Her husband and his family were barely present during the legal proceedings, and testimony indicated that Kaur received severe verbal and possibly physical abuse over the course of her marriage.
Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan found himself in hot water last year, when allegations surfaced that he had purposely selected the gender of his newborn son AbRam illegally. An investigation was conducted in some capacity, but criminal charges were ultimately dropped.
According to Appeal-Democrat.com, Sidhu also told jurors to be “proud” of Kaur for selflessly defending the life of her daughter. She is now back at home, with both her younger and older daughter.