Angry in the Great White North

The story Paul Cheema told police on July 5, 2007 was that three men invaded his home in Surrey, BC, murdered his wife Shemina Hirji, and left him uninjured.

Police officially pursued the home invasion angle for a time, but it became apparent that they did not believe that it was a home invasion.

Cheema was the de facto prime suspect.  Suspicions grew when it was discovered that he had be convicted of violence against a former fiance.  Then the whispers ended when Cheema was formally picked up for questioning.

He was released, but he was now the prime suspect.

The investigation ended prematurely when Cheema hanged himself at the end of August.

And yet, some people wondered if Cheema was being hounded.

He wasn't.  Right from the beginning police had every reason to suspect him.  When the police arrived at the murder scene, they found evidence that suggested that Shemina had been dead for some length of time.  In that time, someone had spent time in the main floor bathroom, cleaning off her blood.  That person then tried to clean the sink itself, to eliminate the presence of the blood that had been washed off.  Someone with her blood on his hand had opened the door to Paul Cheema's car.

I can't find the original story online.  I can find the links in search engines but the story itself has expired.  There is, however, a fight brewing between the Cheema and Hirji family.  A reference to the evidence appears in that report:

NARINDER 'PAUL' CHEEMA, who committed suicide after the murder of his wife, Surrey school principal SHEMINA HIRJI, was back in the news as CTV reported on the weekend that his dad, DIDAR CHEEMA, was trying to gain control of her estate. The media also reported that Hirji's brother SHAFIN HIRJI has in an affidavit said that Paul was to blame for his sister's murder, based on the search warrant information. The warrant said that Paul "attempted to clean up and clean off the blood from Shemina Cheema in the main-floor bathroom sink after he committed the murder." Therefore, Shafin argues that Paul's estate should not benefit from his "criminal act."

I'm still keeping an eye on this story.  It is no longer being widely reported, but I don't think that reflects a lack of interest in the aftermath of the events of last summer.

Check out other entries from the Shemina Hirji category
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