Triple killer Daljit Singh Dulay (inset), who murdered his sister, her husband and another man, in a bid to restore his traditional Indian family’s honour, has won the right to leave prison with no supervision. At a hearing this month, the Parole Board of Canada decided to give Dulay unescorted passes (full record of hearing after jump) that will permit him to leave prison for short periods. He will be able to visit family at their homes in the Lower Mainland in British Columbia, unless the Border Services Agency decides to deport him. He’s subject to a deportation order imposed in 1993 but authorities could choose not to act on it immediately. Dulay is incarcerated at a minimum-security prison in B.C.
Victims murdered in Calgary in 1991, (from left) Gurdawr Singh Dulay, Kulwinder Dulay, Mukesh Kumar Sharma
Seven years ago, a psychological assessment found that Dulay had a “shallow” understanding of his crime. Now, the board says he’s a low risk to reoffend and so he can go free, with absolutely no supervision. Early in his prison sentence, he wanted to flee Canada and get back to his family’s native India. With other inmates, he staged an escape attempt from a medium-security prison in 1996. He was quickly caught by police and shipped to a super secure prison facility where he displayed a “defiant and oppositional attitude” for some time. Parole Board records from a hearing earlier this year revealed that some members of Dulay’s strict Sikh community believed he was a hero for killing his sister. Remarkably, parole officials now appear to accept the claim of a village committee in India, the Dulay family’s home, that “they no longer espouse negative values which condoned your crime.” Dulay was considered a hero because the murders were viewed as having restored the family’s honour because his sister, Kulwinder Dulay, 20, had married a man without her father’s consent (for more on the complex history of the ancient tradition of honour killings, read my coverage of the Shafia case). Dulay also killed Gurdawr Singh Dulay, 28, and Mukesh Kumar Sharma, 28. Sharma was a close friend of the couple and their employer. Dulay told authorities, after he was imprisoned, that he was acting in conformity with his religious beliefs and would not be considered guilty of a crime in India. Dulay his sister and her husband to Calgary from his home in B.C. with the help of a private investigator. He shot the victims with a high-powered assault rifle. He was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.
To read the record of Dulay’s previous parole hearing, and for more background on the case, read this previous post.
Here’s the written record of the parole board hearing that was held November 5, 2013:
