The South Australian supreme court on Wednesday was told that an Adelaide man named Tarikjot Singh wrapped his ex-girlfriend, Jasmeen Kaur, with tape and wire ties and buried her alive in an act of revenge after she rejected him. The incident took place in March 2021.  

Jasmeen Kaur was a nursing student. She was killed at the age of 21 by 22-year-old Tarikjot Singh, who admitted to the crime by pleading guilty in court. 

On Wednesday, the prosecutor Carman Matteo SC argued in the South Australian supreme court in sentencing submissions that Kaur’s murder was a planned act of vengeance or revenge by Singh after facing rejection. She also stated that the murder was planned before the victim was abducted from her work on 5 March 2021.

The body was discovered inside a shallow grave in South Australia State’s remote Flinders Ranges. According to reports, her hands and legs were taped and constrained with cable ties, her eyes blindfolded, and ‘superficial’ cuts on the neck. These cuts resulted in her being buried alive with full consciousness and awareness of breathing in and swallowing the soil which caused her subsequent death. Matteo described it as ‘absolute terror’.

The post-mortem reports confirm that Kaur died the next day on 6 March 2021.

‘The way in which Kaur was killed involved, really, an uncommon level of cruelty,’ said Matteo. ‘[It was] a killing that was committed as an act of vengeance or as an act of revenge.’ 

According to Matteo, on 9 February  – nearly a month before Kaur was murdered – Kaur had filed a police report stating that Singh was stalking her. She claimed that in the days preceding Ms Kaur’s passing, Singh composed multiple notes to the young nursing student that he never got around to sending. She established that once their relationship ended, Singh began the ‘cold and clinical planning’ of Ms Kaur’s murder.

Singh was scheduled to go on trial this year, but at his arraignment in February, he entered a guilty plea. He is facing a mandatory life sentence with a non-parole period that the court will impose starting next month.