On the night of her death, Manpreet Kaur called her sister Jaspreet Kaur, crying and distraught over her husband, Chamanjot Singh.
Earlier that day, he had withdrawn $1,500 from Manpreet's bank account and accused her of lying to him about her work hours and where she had been.
The money was for her college fees, explains Jaspreet on SBS's Insight, so a bitter fight broke out between the couple that evening. Jaspreet says it wasn't the first time she had heard about the emotional and physical abuse that her sister had sustained from her husband.
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“I straight away suggest to my sister, 'Don't bother anything, just come to my house,'” she says. “[Manpreet] said: 'It's too far so probably I'll be very late if I'll come now, so tomorrow I will sort out this matter and I will come to your house.'”
She never made it to morning.
According to court documents, Chamanjot had slit his wife's throat eight times in December 2009 with a box cutter. He was charged with manslaughter after the jury accepted his claim that he had been provoked to kill and was sentenced to six years in prison.
Provocation is a partial defence to murder, which – if accepted by the jury – results in a conviction for manslaughter instead of murder. And that means a lesser sentence.
Jaspreet believes Chamanjot's jail sentence was too light-handed and wants the provocation defence abolished.
“Three years only has been already passed and just three years left,” she says. “He can meet his family after three years, he will be able to go back and he can survive his life as he lived before. But we can't see her anymore; never, ever.”
The case has sparked an inquiry into the provocation defence in New South Wales.
Though the defence has been abolished in Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania, New South Wales Senior Public Defender, Mark Ierace says the defence still has relevance in today's society.
He says abolishing the defence would result in “gross injustices”, for example, in cases where battered spouses kill their abuser after lengthy periods of domestic violence.
“It may well be appropriate to eliminate provocation which is based on sexual infidelity and jealousy and non-violent sexual advances,” Mark tells Insight. “But let's not abolish provocation all together if the effect of that is going to be, what we would all regard as, gross injustices.
“This is a very emotional issue and one can well understand where those emotions come from. But we've got to be careful in responding to what we see as injustices that we don't effectively throw out the baby with the bath water.”
Phil Cleary, an anti- family violence activist, is critical of the way justice systems use provocation. His sister Vicki was killed in 1987 outside the kindergarten where she worked by her ex-boyfriend, Peter Keogh. Under the provocation defence, Peter received a three year sentence.
“We went to trial and we saw provocation unfold,” he says on Insight. “My sister's name and character was pilloried.
“Women are always blamed in courtrooms. When they're killed they're blamed, when they're raped they're blamed. We have a blaming culture against women.
“I have no problem with a provocation concept but if you're going to argue that provocation is based on a woman allegedly having an affair, allegedly going to leave a relationship, if you're going to argue those things, women are dead women walking.”
Catch the last episode of Insight for 2012 tonight at 8:30pm on SBS One.
Watch a preview of the debate below:
