Quebec man who drowned his 2 children gets life in prison, 9 years for assaults on wife, daughter

Kamaljit Arora was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole for 25 years, on Monday at the Laval, Que., courthouse, for the 2022 murders of his 13-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son.

To that sentence, Judge Alexandre Bien-Aimé Bastien added eight years for Arora’s attempted murder of his eldest daughter, and one year for the strangulation of his ex-wife — two charges he was convicted of in March.

A jury also found Arora, now 49, guilty of first-degree murder for drowning his youngest children in a bathtub on Oct. 17, 2022. The victims’ names are covered by a publication ban.

On Monday, Judge Bien-Aimé Bastien called the acts “elaborate” and “thought-out,” noting that Arora had spent several months ruminating on and planning the murders.

His lawyers had argued his crimes were not premeditated and that he was experiencing a relapse of depression, first diagnosed in 2020, which the judge rejected.

The Crown’s theory is that Arora murdered his children to get back at his then-wife, who was threatening to leave him.

According to Crown prosecutor Juliette Gauthier-Soucy, Arora had planned to kill all three of their children that day, but forgot about a shift his eldest daughter was working. When his wife returned from work, Arora pretended their two youngest children were upstairs and left with her to pick up their eldest from work.

When they all returned home, he attacked the two women, before his eldest was able to seek refuge at a neighbour’s house.

The two were not present Monday, with Gauthier-Soucy saying it was too difficult for them.

“We will be able to announce to them the news that it is officially over,” said Gauthier-Soucy.

“We hope that this will bring some comfort to their hearts and that they will perhaps be able to hope to, one day, move on.”