Melbourne ,March 7: A 23-year-old part-time Indian taxi driver, who kept a three-year-old Indian boy unconscious in the boot of his car and drove around for three hours before dumping him in a field, was arrested on Sunday and charged over the death of the toddler.
Sources told PTI that the wife of Dhillon Gursewak, who has been arrested, is likely to be charged for helping her husband in disposing of the toddler’s body. Gursewak, who lived in the same house as the three-old boy Gurshan Singh Channa and his parents from Punjab, has been charged with manslaughter due to criminal negligence and appeared in an out-of-sessions hearing at St. Kilda Road police complex on Sunday, local media reports said.
The police said Gursewak was not a relative of the toddler though they lived in the same house. Gursewak “placed the child in the boot of his car unconscious but still alive”, Ron Iddles, senior sergeant of the homicide squad, was quoted as saying by the Australian Associated Press. Mr Iddles did not, however, say how the three-year-old boy became unconscious.
“He (Gursewak) then drove up to at least three hours with the child in the boot of the car, eventually stopping at Oaklands Junction, where he placed the child from the boot into the grass and did not check to see if the child was alive, then returned to 28, David Street, Lalor,” Mr Iddles said.
Gursewak was refused bail and will reappear in the Melbourne magistrates’ court on Tuesday.
Channa’s body was found by a council worker on Thursday night, six hours after he disappeared from a rented property
shared by his parents with friends and family here. A total of 12 people lived in the house. Channa was in Australia on a holiday along with his parents. An initial autopsy on the child was inconclusive.
Gursewak was arrested on Sunday from a friend’s house in Melbourne’s north. He appeared before the hearing dressed in a white polo shirt, black tracksuit pants and brown thongs and was calm throughout the hearing.
He referred to the toddler as “the kid... the kid that died” when asked who lived with him at the David Street address.
Gursewak has a daughter, who is living in India. He applied for bail, offering to leave his passport and driver’s licence, saying that he could stay at the Mill Park house where he
was arrested.
Mr Iddles said the police had spoken with Gursewak’s friend and were told that “because of the events that transpired today he is no longer welcome there”. First bail justice Ben Czerniewicz then remanded Dhillon in custody
amid concerns that he posed an unacceptable flight risk and could also tamper with witnesses in the case.
Mr Iddles said the police opposed bail because Gursewak had few ties to Australia and was under investigation by the immigration officials over allegations that his passport might be forged.— PTI
Natasha Chaku