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Student Who Plotted To Kill Family Gets Community Work

Arthur J Pais in London, Ontario

Twenty-year-old Harjit Mann who sought out a hired man to kill her parents and brother escaped a prison sentence as the judge accepting a defense plea about her state of mind at the time of the incident gave her two years of community service sentence last week.

Mann, who faced a ten-year sentence, has to continue her psychiatric treatment. Justice John Kennedy accepted the opinion of Dr Arun Prakash, a forensic psychiatrist who treated her after the 1997 incident. He told the court she suffered from a case of manic depression that caused severe mood swings.

Mann, daughter of a wealthy, conservative couple, Chhinder and Mohinder Mann, was upset at them because they wanted her marry a Sikh man of their choice. She also felt they did not want her to pursue a medical degree because they thought she would be too old to get married by the time she completed her studies.

A first-year student at the University of Western Ontario, she called a high school friend in whom she often confided, to ask for his help in finding someone to kill her family. But David Halsema got scared and immediately contacted the Ontario Provincial Police. She said her father, who had a manufacturing business and mother, a nurse, had considerable amount of savings and property. The family had migrated from England 15 years ago.

An officer pretending to be a hit man met with Halsema and Mann and secretly recorded a conversation, which was played for the court.

In a confident, clear and composed voice, Mann asked the undercover officer to kill her father, mother and older brother, law-student Harjinder Singh, and "make it look like a robbery". She wanted the task to be carried out the next day.

She then gave him detailed directions to her family's home and negotiated a price of $ (Canadian) 75,000 that she said she would pay him after she inherited the family savings and property. Mann was immediately arrested by the officer and charged with soliciting help to murder.

After her arrest, she dropped out of university and was enrolled in a private rehab center.

When she pleaded guilty to the murder plot, in a videotaped statement to the police, a tearful and at times incoherent Mann complained to officers about the strict control she faced from her family.

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