THE ARTICLE

Incest twist in Queensland triple murder case

By Elisabeth Wynhausen January 10, 2009
Article from: The Australian
Singh sibling murder case in court
Claims of incest in Singh family
Household of violence, court told

Unsolved deaths ... the murdered Singh siblings came from a household of incest and violence, a court has heard.

IT is nearly six years since Neelma Singh, 24, her brother Kunal, 18, and sister Sidhi, 12, were allegedly murdered in their home in Brisbane's Bridgeman Downs.

Their mother Shirley Singh has kept their rooms as they were, turning her home into a shrine.
Her children's clothes are laid out on the beds of what her husband Vijay Singh, in his statement to police, called their "dream house".

But behind the tribute to her three children lies a darker tale with claims of domestic violence, incest and death threats - none of which involved the prime suspect, The Weekend Australian reports.

Following one of the most complex investigations in Queensland's history, police charged Max Sica 11 days ago with three counts of murder.

Mr Sica has repeatedly denied he had anything to do with their deaths.

At his bail hearing in the Queensland Supreme Court, last week, Mr Sica's barrister Michael Byrne QC said: "It has taken the police some six years to put together what is essentially a circumstantial case."

Questioned for 18 hours on one occasion and 14 hours on another, Mr Sica freely co-operated with police until his lawyers insisted they obtain warrants before further questioning.
Elements of the story emerged at Mr Sica's bail hearing.

Documents filed with the Supreme Court painted a disturbing picture of the Singh household in the years and months before the alleged murders.
Mr Singh tape-recorded conversations in the house, after he was threatened by people from Fiji, his homeland.

Police transcribed a recording made in 2003, before the murders, in which Ms Singh angrily accused her husband of indecent behaviour.
"You touched my daughter's pubic area," she said.
She also accused him of forcing her to have sex with a woman and many men - and possibly with Mr Sica.

In a statement to police in November, 2004, 18 months after the murders, that was also tendered to the court, Mr Singh said: "I have never approached Max Sica and encouraged him to have sex with my wife Shirley."

The tape recorded conversation between the Singhs revealed that Mr Sica entered the room and became embroiled in a furious argument with Mr Singh.
"I know what you did to your daughter," Mr Sica said. "I know what you did to us. I can cave your f--king head in right now and get away with it, capisce?"

Mr Singh kept telling Mr Sica to get out of the house.
"I give you the right to stay here to protect me," Ms Singh told Mr Sica.

In documents tendered by the police, Detective Senior Sergeant Joseph Zitny, the investigating officer, stated that Mr Sica had a "propensity for violence" and should not be given bail. Sergeant Zitny quoted the threats Mr Sica allegedly made during the argument with Mr Singh.

The defence team contended that the threat was taken out of context and was misleading. "The context of the threat relied on by Sergeant Zitny is a conversation in which Shirley Singh is saying that Vijay Singh will be charged because of his sexual maltreatment of the deceased child Sidhi."

The transcript revealed that Mr Sica repeatedly told Mr Singh: "Put the weapon away."
During the bail hearing, Ian Coyle, a forensic psychologist who had assessed Mr Sica for the defence, said the weapon Mr Singh had picked up was "a knife of one sort or another".

In the statement he gave to police in 2004, Mr Singh said that seven years earlier, in 1997, he had pleaded guilty to assault in the Queensland District Court after beating Neelma, then 18, with a broken pool cue.

In 2002, his wife took out a restraining order against him.

Mr Singh is often in Suva, where he has a motor spare parts business. He and his wife were there when their children were murdered.

In his statement to police, Mr Singh said he had started recording conversations in his home after receiving threatening calls, conceivably from relatives of a woman in Fiji with whom he had recently had an affair, a nightclub manager in Suva he had given his home number in Brisbane.

"They used words like 'kill your wife and rape your daughter'," he told police.

The defence team's bail application said the material tendered by the Crown provided "ample evidence of other persons who have credible reasons to harm the Singh family".

But from the first, police were focused on Mr Sica as the main suspect.