Husband accused of setting wife on fire granted bail

A Sydney man, accused of murdering his wife by dousing her in petrol and setting her on fire, will be let free from custody after being granted bail.

Kulwinder Singh, 37, was arrested last month, four years after Parinder Kaur burned to death outside her Rouse Hill home in December 2013.

The court heard neighbours described hearing a “a blood-curdling scream, a really high pitched scream .. a lady screaming for help.”

Police allege Ms Kaur’s death followed a long history of domestic abuse and violence, but Mr Singh has always proclaimed his innocence.

His lawyers argued today he should be set free so he could return to work at the State Rail Authority where he’d been employed for 18 years, and work on preparing his legal defence.

They also said he needed inpatient psychiatric care in hospital, rather than the mental health treatment he was receiving in jail.

Forensic psychiatrist Dr Gerald Chew told the court “clinically, Mr Singh is suffering from a major depressive episode. He is at a very high risk of suicide.”

His lawyers also pointed out that all the fingerprints on the cigarette lighter and the can of accelerant belonged to the victim, highlighting evidence given to a previous coronial inquest from an expert witness that the prints were “consistent with a self pour. It would be possible to self pour.”

Mr Singh has always claimed his wife’s death was her own doing.

“This was some act on her part that was miscalculated ... she passed away as a result of some misadventure on her part,” his lawyer Frank Santisi told the court.

Magistrate Theo Tsaudaridis agreed that the prosecution case that Mr Singh had doused the victim with that accelerant “is inconsistent with the expert evidence.”

He said the Crown case was “almost entirely circumstantial“, and based on the evidence before him at Parramatta local court, he granted bail to Mr Singh under strict conditions.