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Family feud turns ugly as nephew threatens to behead minister, molest aunt

Sonia Chopra in Victoria

A longstanding volatile religious feud between members of a large family in Victoria, British Columbia, turned verbally violent with a youth threatening to cut off his uncle's head and ended with the court deciding on the nephew's guilt last week.

In British Columbia, where religious and personal feuds have led to the assassination of Tara Singh Hayer, editor of a Punjabi newspaper, the gunning down of Bindy Johal, a young drug lord, and the strangulation of 18-year-old Poonam Randhawa by a stalker, all within the past year, the family feud involving the uncle and nephew made the front pages of mainstream daily newspapers.

The uncle, Harry Lali, 43, is a prominent politician in British Columbia -- he is the highways minister and has held his current position since last February. He testified in court against his nephew Navinder (Neil) Singh Nann, 25, who was put on probation for two years last week.

With the Lali family sitting on one side of the courtroom and Nann's family on the other, Nann was given the verdict and prohibited from contacting Lali or his wife Harinder Rani.

Nann was convicted of three counts of uttering threats. In phone calls on August 30 and 31, 1996, he threatened to kill Lali and his wife and sexually assault her.

"This has been going on for a while now, he was stalking the family, making late-night phone calls and generally intimidating the family," said Am Johal, special assistant to the minister, in a telephone conversation on Sunday.

Johal added that "since the matter is personal, a family issue," Lali "would rather not comment".

But Nann, also in a phone interview, denied the allegations and called them "all lies, false, it didn't happen. I didn't do anything", but added that "we have a family problem, it is a feud."

The two families have had a bad history with several conflicts and confrontations, mostly on religious grounds. Family members, even the young ones, vividly remember the fighting.

"The feud has been there forever", since "I was two", said Steven Lali, 12, who explained that two of Harry's sisters had married two brothers and they all live "pretty close by", and he hoped that one day, the fight would end.

Steven said the latest incident was "shocking" and everyone was pretty upset.

Lali said he was "very reluctant to discuss the issue", adding that if he had "been a private citizen, it was different".

He also said he "just wanted the whole thing to go away". But he agreed on the following account heard in the courtroom and reported by local newspapers.

Lali said Nann phoned while he and his wife were celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary. Nann shouted into the phone that he would cut off his head and knew some people in Vancouver who would help.

He related parts of the phone conversation, saying that Nann told him, "Come over to my house right now, I am ready for you."

Lali said he then responded, "I am at home. Why don't you come over here?"

Then he said Nann shouted, "Then I will meet you halfway. And that's where I am going to kill you."

In February 1993, Lali was found not guilty of assaulting his sister Harbhajan (Joan) Nann, 39, in a religious dispute about her husband Mohan who said he was a Sikh holy man.

At that time, lawyers said Mohan had persuaded his wife, who believed that God spoke through her husband, to falsely accuse Lali, who had accused him of being a fraud who claimed to have visions to get money from the local Sikh community.

On Friday in Kamloops provincial court, Judge James Gordon asked Lali if there was any possibility of reconciliation between the two families?

"Our families live in two separate worlds and that's how I would like to keep it," Lali responded.

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