Martha Freeman: Jeffrey was desperate to hold onto his failing marriage. Perhaps he’d have felt differently if he knew what his wife was hiding in the attic.
Wendy Evans: Sleeping with your best friend’s ex is never a good idea. That applies two-fold when your friend is a psycho with money to spend on a hitman.
Anne Gates: Raymond swore he’d never love again after his wife died. But then there was Anne, young, beautiful, intriguing... exceptionally dangerous.
Robyn Lindholm: She had the looks of a supermodel and the morals of a viper. The media called her the most dangerous woman in Australia. They were right.
Marquita Burch: The babysitter claimed that the little boy had vanished from a park while she was momentarily distracted. The truth was far more sinister.
Teresa Perez: Teresa had a thing for older men with lots of money. This time, she’s hit the motherlode. Try getting between her and her prize.
Amina Chaudhary: A romance gone awry, a woman hungry for revenge, an innocent child who will pay a dreadful price.
Amina Chaudhary
Sarabjit Minhas was young, beautiful, free-spirited, living the best life that her adopted homeland of Canada had to offer. Like any teenager, she enjoyed dressing up, hanging out with friends, listening to music, and going to clubs. Unfortunately for Sarabjit, the time for such frivolous pursuits was rapidly nearing its end. Her 18th birthday was approaching. She’d be required to marry and settle down. Her family already had a potential husband lined up. They were strict Sikhs and expected her to marry within their religion.
But Sarabjit was in love with someone else. His name was Vijay Gupta, he was 19 years old, and he and Sarabjit had been carrying on a secret affair for several months. The problem was that Vijay was Hindu. Sarabjit’s parents would never consent to the relationship. They continued pressing her to marry the man they’d chosen for her, a successful businessman twice her age. Sarabjit refused, enraging her family.
Then came an angry confrontation with her younger brother, during which he accused Sarabjit of dishonoring the family name. He threatened to kill her if she continued to refuse the arranged marriage. Sarabjit challenged him to do his worst. That was a mistake. The teenager pulled a knife and stabbed her in the upper arm, using so much force that the blade penetrated her bicep and embedded itself in her chest. Had the knife been half an inch longer, she would surely have been killed.
This intervention, as crude and violent as it might have been, had the desired effect for the family. Afraid of becoming the victim of an honor killing, Sarabjit fell into line and married the man chosen for her, a man old enough to be her father, a stranger for whom she had no affection. Marriage, however, did nothing to dim her passion for Vijay. She continued to see him in secret, to hope against hope that they might still be together someday.
But Vijay was facing family pressures of his own. He too was expected to marry and had already become engaged to a woman back in India, a woman chosen by his family, a woman he’d never met. Sarabjit was blissfully unaware of this arrangement. She and Vijay continued to sneak around, sometimes accompanied on their outings by Vijay’s eight-year-old nephew, Rajesh. This was a sweet kid who Vijay was exceptionally close to. The boy also developed a bond with Sarabjit, addressing her by the affectionate epithet, “auntie.”
In 1981, Sarabjit discovered that she was pregnant. Since she had been intimate with both her husband and Vijay, the paternity of the child was uncertain. Not to Sarabjit, though. She was convinced, as only a woman can be, that the child’s father was Vijay. She could hardly wait to tell him and intended to do so when they next met. However, on this day, Vijay had a bombshell announcement of his own. He was going to India for a few weeks to visit his family. Sarabjit was crushed by the news. She decided in that moment to hold back on telling him about her pregnancy. She wasn’t that far along. It would wait until Vijay got back from his trip.
What Sarabjit didn’t know, what Vijay had failed to tell her, was that this wasn’t just a family reunion. He was going back to his homeland to be married. When she eventually found out, via a mutual friend, she refused to believe it. Then, after confirming the news with another acquaintance, she broke down in tears. She felt betrayed, deceived, dejected. Never mind that she was married to another man, she had always considered Vijay to be hers and hers alone. Now, the dream that they might one day be together, was gone. She had lost him.
Sarabjit’s period of dejection did not last long. Within a few days, her sadness had hardened into something else, something primal. She wanted to get back at her lover, to hurt him as he’d hurt her, to teach him what loss felt like. Briefly, she considered killing herself. Then, she thought that she might find another lover, to show him what he was missing out on. But neither of those solutions seemed adequate. She wanted something that would crush his soul. Then she had it. His nephew Rajesh, the little boy he loved almost as a son. That would get to him. That would hurt as much as she was hurting.
On the morning of February 3, 1982, eight-year-old Rajesh Gupta left his home in the Toronto suburbs to make his daily walk to school. It was a frigid day, with snow on the ground and a brisk wind arrowing between the buildings. Rajesh was bundled up against the elements in a scarf, coat and hoodie, with gloves on his hands. Still the cold managed to find a way in. When a car pulled up beside him and a familiar voice called out his name, he got right in. Sarabjit offered him a ride to school. Rajesh was more than happy to accept.
First, though, Sarabjit had to make a stop at her house. Rajesh didn’t mind. It was on the way and he had time. He even followed Sarabjit inside when she suggested it. In doing so, he walked right into a trap. Rajesh was standing in the living room when Sarabjit crept up behind and struck him on the back of the head with some heavy object. Rajesh was knocked unconscious and collapsed to the floor. Then Sarabjit straddled him, pulled the drawstring from his hoodie and drew it around his throat. She held it tight until the boy stopped breathing. Rajesh died right there, strangled to death by the woman he’d affectionately called “auntie.”
Sarabjit had planned every aspect of this heartless crime, including the disposal of the body. She needed it to be found. She wanted to make a statement. The child’s corpse was crammed inside a cardboard box and loaded into the trunk of Sarabjit’s car. She then drove to the spot where she regularly rendezvoused with Vijay and dumped it there, face down in the snow. The body was discovered later that same day. Officers who responded to the scene initially thought the child was the victim of a hit-and-run. Then they saw the distinctive bruising on Rajesh’s neck and knew it was something more sinister.
The Gupta family was devastated by the cruel death of this much-loved child. What kind of a monster would inflict this on an innocent little boy? Vijay Gupta was still on his honeymoon when he got the news. He immediately made plans to return to Canada, leaving his new bride behind. There, he found his beloved Sarabjit waiting for him, ready to ease his suffering in her loving arms.
But Sarabjit’s revenge was not yet complete. She needed Vijay to know that it was she who had murdered his nephew. Only then would he understand the extent to which his betrayal had hurt her. A few days after Vijay’s return to Canada, the two of them were in bed together when she blurted out, “I did it.” “Did what?” Vijay wanted to know. “I killed Rajesh,” Sarabjit responded.
It is uncertain what response Sarabjit expected to her confession. The response she got was for Vijay to scramble out of bed, pull on his clothes, and go directly to the nearest police station. Sarabjit soon found officers knocking at her door, wanting answers to some pressing questions. She told them that her story was a lie. She’d only said it to get a rise out of Vijay.
Unfortunately for Sarabjit, she had underestimated the power of modern forensics. The police obtained a search warrant for her car and in it found all the evidence they needed for an arrest warrant. There were glass fragments and yellow paint chips that matched traces found on Rajesh’s clothing. There were also fibers in the trunk that were forensically matched to the dead boy’s scarf. Rajesh had been inside this trunk. There was only one reason why he’d have been placed there and only one person who could have done it.
Still, Sarabjit wasn’t going to make it easy for prosecutors. She entered a not guilty plea at trial and tried to deflect responsibility to her husband. The jury saw right through that and convicted her of murder. She was sentenced to life in prison. Under Canadian law that meant a minimum of 25 years behind bars.
But the controversy surrounding Sarabjit Minhas did not end there. Indeed, it was just getting started. While awaiting trial, Sarabjit met another convicted murderer, Anees Chaudhary. The two started corresponding and were eventually given permission to marry. They were then granted conjugal visits, resulting in the birth of three children over the years. Sarabjit, now going by the name Amina Chaudhary, would have little time with the children before they were put up for adoption. Meanwhile, Amina continued to make news. It was reported in the media that she obtained two university degrees while incarcerated, plus a hairdressing license. She was also given a nose job on the taxpayers’ dime.
Amina Chaudhary was released on provisional parole in 2006, one year after her husband walked free. She and Anees settled in Kitchener, Ontario, where they put a deposit on a home with money they had saved while incarcerated. However, Amina soon found herself embroiled in another legal battle. She was not a Canadian citizen, making her eligible for deportation, either to India or the UK. The action was dropped when neither country would accept her. Then, in 2009, both she and her husband were back in custody after they were accused of concealing assets and lying about their income.
These latest arrests proved a death knell to the relationship. By the time that Amina was released again in 2012, she and Anees had split. Amina has since tried to reconcile with her children, her “cellblock babies,” as the media had dubbed them. The children, now adults, reportedly want nothing to do with her.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, Amina Chaudhary continues to insist that she did not murder Rajesh Gupta on that frigid winter’s day in 1982, that she is the victim here, a woman wrongly convicted of a terrible crime. There aren’t many who believe her.
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