Radio host attempted murder trial: Four accused of trying to kill Harnek Singh in Wattle Downs driveway

Gurbinder Singh, left, and Sukhpreet Singh are two of the five men on trial in the High Court at Auckland in relation to the alleged attempted murder of radio host Harnek Singh. Photo / Jason Oxenham

A controversial Auckland radio host with a global following that included over half a million YouTube subscribers didn’t yet know it as he drove home from his studio on the night of Dec 23, 2020, but some of his on-air remarks had recently resulted in a death sentence being ordered for him.

Also unbeknownst to him, a half-dozen would-be executioners were tailing him while packed into three vehicles, ready to carry out the violent order that had been handed down by a New Zealand-based critic.

That was the alleged scenario painted by prosecutors today as the trial began for four men accused of attempted murder and a fifth man accused of being an accessory to murder after the fact.

Radio Virsa host Harnek Singh, known to friends as “Nekki”, considers himself lucky to have survived the dozens of stab wounds and nearly severed arm that resulted from the frenzied attack that night, after his ute was rammed by a van near the driveway of his Wattle Downs, South Auckland home.

“You will hear about the injuries in greater detail during this trial but, put simply, they were horrific,” Crown prosecutor Luke Radich told jurors today during his opening address. “Having inflicted these injuries, his attackers quite literally left him for dead.

“But he wasn’t dead.”

Prosecutors have named eight alleged conspirators altogether, although three of them have pleaded guilty so are not on trial. One of those who pleaded guilty is expected to testify against his former co-defendants as the trial plays out over the next month in the High Court at Auckland.

Radio host Harnek Singh was attacked and stabbed multiple times in December 2020.

The remaining men include Jobanpreet Singh, who is accused of directly participating in the attack inside the radio host’s vehicle; Jagraj Singh and Gurbinder Singh, who allegedly followed Harnek Singh home in a Toyota Prius, offering encouragement or support to the attackers; and Sukhpreet Singh, who is charged with accessory after the fact for allegedly welcoming two of the attackers into his home after the incident.

The oldest defendant, a grey-haired man alleged to have orchestrated the execution attempt, has name suppression. All of the co-defendants have denied the charges against them.

The radio host and all of the accused are members of the Sikh religion, which has over 30 million devotees worldwide and roughly 45,000 followers in New Zealand.

Defence lawyer Dale Dufty, representing the man with name suppression, acknowledged that his client might have been “a little bit happy about what happened to Harnek Singh”. But he was far from alone in that sentiment and he certainly didn’t organise or order the radio host’s death, Dufty said during a brief opening statement.

“Harnek Singh was an agitator, professional provocateur,” Dufty said as he gave jurors an abbreviated lesson about the India-based Sikh religion and its diaspora in New Zealand. “We sometimes call that clickbait.”

Dufty described the religion, started in the largely agricultural Punjab region of India, as one that emphasises equality and welfare for all. Devotees reject the caste system in India, “an awful way of segregating people”, he said, and “they’re quite progressive in the community in helping people”.

Jobanpreet Singh is on trial in the High Court at Auckland. Photo / Jason Oxenham

In recent years, he said, Harnek Singh had courted controversy with negative comments about orthodox members of the religion. His critics grew in 2020 when the radio host commented on a series of controversial laws that had been recently passed by the Indian parliament in which subsidies were ended for Punjab farmers.

“Harnek Singh condemned the actions of the Sikh farmers and those who were protesting,” Dufty explained. “Obviously, that wasn’t well-liked by Sikh people.”

The resulting attack, Dufty said, was ”carried out by angry young men who had a bone to pick”.

Prosecutors did not delve into the politics behind the incident today but they did point out that Harnek Singh paid a particularly high price for his right to express his views.

“As is often the case with someone who speaks their views freely to a large audience, not everyone will agree with him,” Radich said. “Some will disagree - some, strongly so. Some, to the point of making verbal and online threats.

A man with name suppression is on trial in the High Court at Auckland, accused of orchestrating the attempted murder of radio host Harnek Singh. Photo / Jason Oxenham

“Some, fewer again, but in rare cases such as this one, to the extent of doing actual serious physical harm to the person.”

Harnek Singh had been driving home from the Papatoetoe temple where he aired his broadcast in his red Toyota Hilux - its personalised number plate matching the name of his radio station - at around 10pm on the night of the attack. He was nearly home when his vehicle was rammed and three men got out of a Ford Ranger, prosecutors said.

“Harnek Singh, obviously realising he was in trouble, thought about calling 111, but he needed more urgent help than that, so he started sounding the car horn, eventually holding it down for a sustained period,” Radich told jurors. “That sound certainly brought attention, but it didn’t discourage his attackers.

“The men - whose faces were covered and whom Harnek Singh did not recognise - came at his vehicle with bats, smashing the windscreen and driver’s window. It took some effort for them to do so, but they managed it. And once they had, they began stabbing him with knives. And not a little bit either.”

He suffered head wounds “right down to the skull” and “extensive wounds” to his neck and upper body, authorities allege. He also suffered a fractured skull, a broken arm, a cut to his ear that almost severed it and cuts to one of his arms so bad that two arteries were completely severed - likely leading to his death by blood loss had an officer not turned up quickly and applied a tourniquet, the Crown said.

“You could say that he was stabbed within an inch of his life but, in a very real sense, it was probably even less than that,” Radich told jurors. “The Crown case is that this attack was at a level of viciousness that there can be no conclusion other than that the attackers intended to kill.”

Jagraj Singh is on trial in the High Court at Auckland, accused of aiding or encouraging the attempted murder of radio host Harnek Singh. Photo / Jason Oxenham

Radich also pointed to Telco data retrieved by police which is alleged to show defendant Jobanpreet Singh texting a woman on the morning after the attack.

“He got stabbed with knives all across his neck. We never thought that he will still be safe,” Jobanpreet Singh is alleged to have written, according to a translation of one of the messages.

He went on to express doubt the radio host would ultimately survive and revealed a plan to burn down his house during his funeral, prosecutors said.

Defence lawyer Peter Kaye, who represents Jobanpreet Singh, said prosecutors are dead wrong in describing his client as having been “at the forefront of the attack”.

“The defence entirely disagrees - no ifs, no buts, entirely disagrees,” he said, adding that his stance throughout the trial will be simple: “He was not there.”

Lawyer Katie Hogan, representing Sukhpreet Singh, predicted that little of the Crown’s case will relate to her client, who is charged with being an accessory after the fact to murder. He wasn’t arrested until 16 months after the attack, after a defendant-turned-witness identified him to police. But he’s not a reliable witness, she said.

Prosecutors allege Sukhpreet Singh ushered two attackers into his home, asked them how it had gone, helped them try to hide the Ford Ranger in his garage, allowed them to take showers and provided them with fresh clothes. His lawyer, meanwhile, insisted he had no knowledge of a murder attempt and did not intentionally help anyone to avoid arrest.

Lawyers for the other men declined to immediately address the jurors but will have other opportunities to do so later in the trial, which continues tomorrow before Justice Mark Woolford and the jury.

Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.