A 25-year-old unsolved killing of an Indian schoolteacher who worked at a gas station seems to have been cracked with the Canadian police arresting a man and charging him with the murder.
Surinder Singh Parmar, who was a teacher in India and held a PhD in history, was found stabbed to death on November 19, 1990, inside a men’s washroom of the Penny Gas Bar in Toronto.
The suspect, Rupert Richards, now 61, was arrested on Monday from his home in Toronto, police said on Tuesday. Richards was “quite surprised” to learn that he has been charged with first-degree murder in the 1990 killing, CBC news reported.
DNA evidence nailed him
Det-Sgt Stacy Gallant, in charge of the Toronto police force’s cold-case unit, said innovations in DNA evidence and other investigative techniques helped crack the case.
“Items were re-examined,” the officer said. “Items that had been sitting on a shelf for years.”
Parmar, who was 38 then, worked nights at the gas station and had a family in India, including a wife and two children aged six and 12.
Family lives in Toronto
After the killing, the family immigrated to Canada. The family currently live in the Toronto area, the report said.
The officer said they were happy to hear of the arrest, but did not want to speak to the media. “To go 25 years without knowing who did this to their father was difficult to cope with,” Mr. Gallant said.
Parmar arrived in Canada in June 1990 and had planned to return home in January. He died of multiple stab wounds to the neck and abdomen.
He wanted to make some money
“He was trying to make a little money,” Toronto police Det-Sgt Jim Crowley told The Canadian Press in 1990. “He wanted to see some friends on the West Coast before he went back to India.”
At the time of the incident, police told reporters that Parmar was likely killed during a robbery at the 24-hour gas station.
