Housemate in court over death of little boy

Gurshan Singh was found on the roadside.

SYDNEY - Mystery still surrounds the death of an Indian toddler in Melbourne, despite the arrest of a housemate of the family who has allegedly admitted placing the unconscious boy in his car boot and then dumping him by a roadside.

Gursewak Dhillon, a 23-year-old Indian taxi driver, will appear again in Melbourne Magistrates Court today after being charged with manslaughter by criminal negligence during a late-night hearing on Sunday.

Dhillon, who is unrelated to 3-year-old Gurshan Singh, and who is suspected of being in Australia on a fake passport, has been refused bail.

Gurshan disappeared on Thursday afternoon from a house in north Melbourne where his family, who are visiting Australia from Punjab, in northern India, are staying.

His body was found about 30km away, in long grass near the city's airport, six hours later.

The out-of-sessions court hearing at the St Kilda police complex was told Dhillon had admitted stowing the boy in his car and driving around for three hours before depositing his body. Detective Senior Sergeant Ron Iddles, from the homicide squad, said Dhillon "did not check to see if the child was alive", before returning to the house he shared with Gurshan's family and up to 10 others.

However, Iddles offered no evidence about how the little boy came to be unconscious, and the cause of his death remains unclear. His fully clothed body showed no visible signs of trauma, and an autopsy last week failed to determined how he died.

Gurshan's family have been in Australia for the past two months, and were about to return home.

His parents, Harjit Singh and Harpreet Kaur, say he went missing while his mother was in the shower and his father was out at a library. On Sunday, after attending a prayer meeting at a nearby Sikh temple, they learned that an arrest had been made.

Vasan Srinivasan, president of the Federation of Indian Associations of Victoria, said: "They were absolutely shocked.

They couldn't speak. [His] mother was, all along, sitting with tears coming down her cheeks."

Srinivasan said the whole Indian community was helping to support the family.

The discovery of Gurshan's body initially sparked speculation of links with a recent spate of assaults on Indian students in Melbourne, some of them believed to be racially motivated. The Indian community yesterday praised Victorian police for the manner in which they have investigated the boy's death.

The Australian Immigration Department is investigating the legitimacy of Dhillon's student visa. He has been in Australia since June 2008, and told the court he was a part-time taxi driver who was about to begin a fulltime job this week with a courier company.

Arrested on Sunday morning at a friend's house, Dhillon - who has a daughter in India - was refused bail because the court agreed there was an unacceptable risk of him fleeing, and because he might interfere with witnesses if released. He had offered to surrender his passport and driving licence.

Police denied reports in the Indian press that Dhillon's wife, who is with him in Melbourne, had also been arrested and was likely to be charged with helping him to dispose of Gurshan's body.

A spokeswoman said no further arrests or charges were expected at this stage.

Gurshan's family is waiting for police to release his body before deciding when to return to India.