Toronto, May 9 (IANS): New charges have been laid against two of the four Indo-Canadian men accused of killing an Indo-Canadian woman in 2009 at Abbotsford in Canada's province of British Columbia.
Three of the men accused of murdering Kulwinder Gill were charged April 22 with first-degree murder, while a fourth man, Sukhpal Johal, 26, of Surrey, was charged with conspiracy to commit murder and accessory after the fact.
The murder accused were: Kulwinder's husband, Iqbal Gill, 49, Gurpreet Atwal, 26, of Abbotsford, and Jaspreet Sohi, 28, of Surrey.
The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT) announced Wednesday that the charge against Johal has been changed to first-degree murder, local media reported.
Kulwinder was on a walk with her husband April 27, 2009, evening in the rural area of Townshipline and Bell Road when she was hit by a pick-up truck.
Her husband called the police and led them to a water-filled ditch where she had been thrown by the impact.
Police later seized a vehicle for the knock-out incident.
Though police initially treated it as a routine hit-and-run case, they later started investigating it as a suspicious death and brought in the IHIT.
The woman and her husband owned a home on Siskin Drive in Abbotsford that was used to grow marijuana from 2003 to 2011, according to court documents filed in 2011.
The property was later seized under British Columbia's civil forfeiture act.