Gurpreet Kaur, 31, appeared in the High Court at Dunedin this morning where she pleaded guilty to attempting to pervert the course of justice.
Her efforts proved to be futile.
Kaur’s husband 35-year-old Rajinder was found guilty of the murder of Gurjit Singh following a jury trial in December last year and will be sentenced tomorrow.
Rajinder went to the Liberton home of the 27-year-old victim late on January 28, 2024 and inflicted a brutal attack with a knife he had bought just hours earlier from a hunting store.
An autopsy found Mr Singh had been stabbed at least 46 times and there had been an attempted decapitation.
The evidence about Kaur’s role in the sequence of events was suppressed but that will now lapse after her guilty plea today.
Detectives Amanda Scott and Shelley Dodds visited the killer’s wife at her Fairfield workplace a week after the murder, the court heard during the trial.
They advised her they would be charging Rajinder over Mr Singh’s death and they wanted to speak to her at the station.
But before they set off, Kaur retrieved her handbag and requested a toilet stop.
Det Scott said the woman was in the toilet for up to four minutes before they heard the toilet flush twice and the woman emerged, looking "distressed".
"She was sweaty and she was shaking," the officer said.
They decided to search the bathroom.
Inside a 60l bin, underneath the liner, police found a dark bag with the handles tied.
When they opened it, they discovered a pair of Rajinder’s dark lace-up shoes with chunky white soles.
Subsequent forensic examination of the soles of the footwear turned up tiny fragments of glass consistent with a window that shattered during Mr Singh’s murder.
Kaur initially denied any knowledge of the shoes but when questioned further she acknowledged they belonged to her husband and said he had given them to her because he did not like them.
The defendant said she was scared at the time and denied any knowledge of the murder.
Kaur, who had only been married to Rajinder for a year when the murder occurred, will be sentenced in July.
She remains on bail.
Attempting to pervert the course of justice carries a maximum penalty of seven years’ imprisonment.
