A man of accused of murdering 24-year-old Toyah Cordingley on a Queensland beach four years ago has made a brief court appearance in New Delhi as the formal legal process to extradite him to face trial in Australia got underway.
Thirty-eight-year-old Rajwinder Singh, an Australian of Indian origin, will appear in court next on December 17 for a further hearing on Australia’s extradition request.
“It was the earliest date we could get,” Ajay Digpaul, the public prosecutor representing the Indian government, told reporters outside the magistrate’s court.
Singh arrived at the central Delhi courthouse clad in a light winter jacket and the same navy T-shirt and blue turban he was wearing when police arrested him last Friday.
The capture ended a four-year hunt for Singh who boarded a flight to India just after Cordingley was reported missing.
Singh, who worked as a nurse in Australia, gazed downward and displayed no emotion in the courtroom.
Singh’s counsel claimed at the hearing the accused had not received the documents supporting Australia’s extradition bid.
Digpaul told the court Singh’s lawyers had been supplied with all the papers.
“Australia has made a complete investigation and we are using their documents in support of the extradition,” Digpaul said.
The Indian government has given its provisional consent to Australia’s extradition request.
But the magistrate’s court must hear the evidence compiled by Australian investigators and approve Singh’s extradition before the government can give the final green light for him to be returned to Australia.
Indian media report Singh allegedly told local investigators he stabbed Cordingley on Wangetti Beach, north of Cairns, after an argument over her dog barking at him.
Digpaul, who described Cordingley’s killing as a “heinous offence,” said the prosecution wants to move “with maximum speed” to extradite Singh.
But he noted that Singh “has the right to appeal” any court decision to send him back to Australia.
Singh, who has a wife and three children in Australia, will remain in Delhi’s Tihar Jail, South Asia’s largest prison, “until and unless he is granted bail,” Digpaul said.
The prosecutor said Singh can seek bail but he will oppose any application for his release.
“He can move an application for bail. But the allegations are serious so there’s much less possibility of him getting bail. Also, he was absconding so he’s a flight risk,” Digpaul told AAP.
Singh, who was clean-shaven in Australia, disguised himself in India by growing a long beard and donning a turban and evaded arrest by continually shifting locations.
He was arrested after the Queensland government posted a record $1 million reward earlier in November for information leading to his capture.
Australian police said the reward resulted in a flurry of tips about Singh’s whereabouts.
However, extradition proceedings in India can be extremely drawn out.
The country has a logjam of millions of pending cases that makes justice extremely slow-moving.
Concern about how long it may take to return Singh to Australia has been fuelled by the extradition case of hit-and-run drunk driver Puneet Puneet who killed Queensland teenager Dean Hoftsee in 2008.
After pleading guilty to culpable driving causing death, Puneet fled to India in 2009 and was in hiding until his 2013 arrest.
Puneet has been fighting extradition since then, arguing he “will face discrimination” and “be tortured” in Australia, assertions rejected by the Indian prosecutor in the case as “hogwash”.
In July, Puneet was released on bail to look after his ailing parents, dealing a further blow to the efforts to extradite him.
Digpaul said there was nothing to suggest Singh’s extradition case might be similarly protracted.
“The facts are different in each case. How each case proceeds all depends on the particular set of facts in the case,” he said to AAP.
© AAP 2022
