MONTREAL — A Quebec father accused of killing his two children in their home north of Montreal in 2022 has a new trial date, after recently being granted a third postponement.
Kamaljit Arora is charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of his 13-year-old daughter and his 11-year-old son, and charged in the attempted murder of another daughter and for allegedly trying to strangle his ex-wife.
The trial was expected to begin Friday in Laval, Que., but Arora had asked for a postponement after he lost trust in his lawyers and sought new counsel.
Instead, he appeared in court with his new lawyers and was given a new trial date of Feb. 2 — as well as a warning from the judge that he would not be granted a fourth delay.
“The trial is proceeding on Feb. 2, now you’ve been warned,” Superior Court Justice Alexandre Bien-Aimé Bastien said. The judge said that while Arora has the right to disagree with his lawyers and make decision on his case, “one of the decisions that will not be your own is the date we’re proceeding, and that’s Feb. 2.”
In his Nov. 18 decision on Arora’s request for a third trial postponement, Bien-Aimé Bastien said he would “reluctantly” grant the defendant’s request, even though another judge had warned the accused in April that another extension would not be issued.
Bien-Aimé Bastien blamed Arora for the predicament the accused has found himself in, but concluded he wouldn’t be able to competently represent himself without a lawyer if the trial were to proceed as scheduled.
“His rights to a fair trial … and defence require that he be given sufficient time to take cognizance of the disclosure and prepare his examination of witnesses. Realistically, this will take more than five days,” he wrote.
However, he also wrote that Arora “will not be permitted to use the termination of any future defence counsel as a shield to plead his inability to represent himself going forward.”
The previous two delays arose because of the defence’s struggle to find a psychiatrist to privately assess Arora, and because of changes to his legal team.
The judge noted that the numerous postponements have been distressing for potential witnesses, who have had to revisit “traumatic and anxiety-provoking memories.”
“The evidence does not suggest that these witnesses will be unwilling or unable to testify if the case is postponed. However, there is no doubt that these repeated postponements have had a deleterious effect on their ability to reach a sense of closure,” the decision read.
Crown prosecutor Claudia Carbonneau said the witnesses in the case, including the remaining family members, have been “devastated” by the delays.
“All the firefighters, the first responders, the police officers, they all suffer from post-traumatic stress or they were very traumatized by the event, having to deal with children needing their help,” she said in a phone interview after Friday’s court hearing.
“And the mother and the surviving daughter, it’s difficult for them to understand why it’s still postponed. So it’s very emotional for everybody.”
Carbonneau says the Supreme Court’s R v. Jordan decision, which sets timelines on legal proceedings to avoid unreasonable delays, is not a factor in this case because the postponements were requested by the defence.
Arora’s newly appointed lawyer declined to comment.
Bien-Aimé Bastien’s Nov. 18 decision also provides details of the prosecution’s case against Arora, which have not yet been tested in court.
According to those details, Arora’s ex-spouse arrived home on the afternoon of Oct. 17, 2022, to find her husband sweating and wet. When asked where their two younger children were, Arora allegedly told her they had been told to stay upstairs in their room as punishment, the prosecution says.
When the couple’s eldest daughter arrived home, she went upstairs to fetch medication for her father, and found the inanimate bodies of her 13- and 11-year-old siblings. When the daughter came downstairs, “Mr. Arora was in the process of strangling her mother,” the summary of the prosecution’s case reads. The daughter intervened, biting her father to get him to stop, and then ran to a neighbour’s to call for help, the summary says.
The Nov. 18 decision says an autopsy concluded the children died from drowning and that a toxicology report found several substances in Arora’s system.
The case is likely to hinge on Arora’s mental state at the time he allegedly killed his two children. His initial court appearances were delayed because he spent several weeks in hospital and unresponsive following his Oct. 17 arrest.
In November 2022, a judge found him fit to stand trial.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 21, 2025.
Morgan Lowrie, The Canadian Press
