Horror revisited: Male nurse who raped a female co-worker on Chilliwack high-school bleachers appeals conviction
BC Court of Appeal to hear case of Ruppreet Singh Pawar that he intentionally dragged out so long that the victim took her own life before sentencing
February 5, 2026
*Warning: This story deals with sexual assault and suicide and could be disturbing to some readers.
Of the hundreds of criminal matters I’ve covered and written about over the last two decades, the case of rapist Ruppreet Singh Pawar is one of the ones that affected me the most.
I’ve covered many cases with much more serious charges, even rape cases of a more horrific nature, but it was the Machiavellianism of the unrepentant offender and the soul-crushing despair of the victim that was respectively aggravating and painful to see.
More than four years after N.M. – who still can’t be named because of a publication ban protecting victims – was raped by a co-worker on the bleachers at Chilliwack Secondary School, she was exasperated by the criminal justice system’s treatment of victims, so she called me at my job at the newspaper for help.
The slight, pretty woman who looked much younger than her late-30-something age had become untrusting, slightly paranoid, defeated, angry, and she asked me to help her navigate the system and answer some questions.
I’m not a lawyer or a victim services advocate, but sometimes sharing people’s stories can draw attention to problems and even help solve them. I try to do what I can to help answer anyone’s questions about the court processes with the little that I do know.
“The justice system says the accused has a right to a speedy trial,” N.M. told me when we met at a coffee shop downtown Chilliwack.
“I agree. But I should also have that same right.”
Not only does a victim such as N.M. not have that right in our system – at least in practice – but her rapist, Ruppreet Singh Pawar offered one indignity after, another pouring salt in the wound of a life-shattering sexual assault.
The case so destroyed N.M. mentally that she committed suicide after Pawar was found guilty in June 2023 but before he was sentenced in November 2023.
Now, the highest court in the province, the BC Court of Appeal will hear Pawar’s appeal this Friday, Feb. 7, 2026.
Master manipulation
Pawar manipulated the system to make sure the case was dragged out as long as possible, first by firing lawyer after lawyer after lawyer after lawyer. I believe he was on his fifth lawyer by the time the trial started, but there might have been more.
Then, despite working in a highly specialized profession as a registered psychiatric nurse, and going through four-plus years of interviews and pre-trial hearings, one day into his criminal trial, Pawar suddenly couldn’t understand English and claimed he needed a Punjabi translator. Then, not one time during the following court dates that I sat through in court did the translator lean over and say a single word to Pawar.
Not only did and does Pawar speak and understand perfect English, N.M wasn’t even sure he knew much Punjabi.
And praise be, Pawar also miraculously found religion for his trial, suddenly donning a turban for the first time since N.M. knew him.
But worst of all by far, this lying weasel of a human being played a staggeringly misogynistic ethnic card that was so perverse that you could tell his Surrey defence lawyer Brij Mohan almost didn’t want to bring it up in front of Judge Andrea Ormiston.
Mohan argued that Pawar’s moral culpability should have been reduced for “cultural reasons.” What cultural reasons could lower an offender’s level of guilt? Mohan argued that as an immigrant to Canada from India, he was “disadvantaged in his understanding of the laws of consent in Canada.”
Mohan literally tried to present the argument that a rapist should have less moral blameworthiness in Canada because rape in India is easier to get away with. If that had worked, cue the rape excuses from any immigrant from any Third World country still mired in a culture of anachronistic misogyny.
Terrible timeline
When I first met N.M. to write a story about her case and try to help answer some of her questions about process and delay, it was 2022.
The incident began on July 17, 2018. Pawar worked with N.M. in a health-care facility in Abbotsford. The then 41-year-old victim was 36 when the assault occurred on the bleachers at Chilliwack Secondary School in the early hours of July 18, 2018.
N.M. said she had a good working relationship with Pawar. He was starting a night shift and N.M. said she agreed to give him an orientation.
The court was taken through a text-message exchange in which N.M. had become annoyed as Pawar kept changing the subject while she was trying to arrange a time to meet for an orientation.
She lived in Chilliwack, Pawar was in Abbotsford. During that text exchange, he said he was on his way to Chilliwack. He asked her to go for a drive.
“I was super-confused because there was no reason to go for a drive with him,” N.M. testified.
She said kept trying to ask him to meet at Tim Hortons to simply go over the night-shift routine, but Pawar wanted to meet somewhere else.
“I just found it was very, very strange,” she said. “We had never hung out outside of work before.”
Eventually, the victim agreed to go with Pawar in his truck, and they ended up at Chilliwack Secondary School on the bleachers. After walking around the school track, N.M. testified that Pawar tried to hold her hand, she pulled it back then he grabbed her and kissed her.
He then put his hands up her shirt, pulled her pants down and, eventually after fighting and yelling, she said he was successful in raping her.
She went to police, Pawar was charged and so began the years of torment by an accused bent on causing near endless delays.
Victims can't stop delays
By the time she talked to me, N.M. said she couldn’t understand how the delays were allowed to happen. With postponements, each time lasting an average of nine months, delay weren’t just a matter of lost time, it was emotionally stressful, to say the least.
With a trial finally scheduled for March 2022, Pawar didn’t show up. That next delay put the trial over to February 2023.
“It just puts my life on hold and it is re-traumatizing because I have to worry about the trial and I have to keep recounting the incident in my head, so that I don’t forget anything when being questioned.”
The victim emphasized that her “complete and utter frustration” with the criminal justice system did not apply to the two different public prosecutors who had been on the file.
“Crown counsel have been great and none of this is their fault.”
I didn’t speak to those Crown lawyers, but I did speak to a number of people inside the criminal justice system about the victim’s plight.
“Prosecutors sympathize with your source,” stated one lawyer. “The courts place a very high value on the defendant enjoying representation. This can impose terrible costs on everyone else in the system.”
Section 11(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms “entitles anyone charged with a crime to the right to be heard within a reasonable time.”
Up until 2016, the definition of “reasonable,” as it is throughout the law, was far from concrete. But in the important case of R. v. Jordan, the Supreme Court of Canada set hard ceilings on how long a case could be before the courts before the charges should be tossed out. For provincial matters it is 18 months between charges being laid and a resolution. For Supreme it’s 30 months.
As of three years ago, February 2023, Pawar had faced the charges for 55 months.
So why didn’t Jordan apply? It’s because the courts only punish prosecutors, the Crown, for delay. The Jordan decision provides protection only for the defendant’s right to a speedy trial.
“There is no statutory or constitutional punishment on the defence for dragging their feet,” another lawyer told me. “If the defendant is in jail pending trial, then the punishment is that he may remain there for longer. If the defendant is on bail, then the bail binds him for longer.
“At present, only the defendant has a right to a fair trial and only the defendant has a right to a speedy trial.”
Yet another lawyer told me that Crown actually CAN rely on Jordan as much as defence can. The bottom line is that the defendant cannot keep firing his lawyer indefinitely, but each time he does, he has to request an adjournment.
“It’s up to the judge to grant or deny it. It’s a tough decision for a judge because denying an adjournment to get new counsel could force a self-representation trial, which is difficult for everyone involved especially when the charges are serious and could give the defendant something to argue on appeal.
“But if there is a pattern of adjournments due to new counsel, at some point that needs to end.”
So there is indeed a line beyond which the courts will say “no more delays.”
That line, however, is a blurry one.
Most defendants want to get their charges dealt with and put behind them, but some defendants will happily take the delay. Delay usually hurts the prosecution. Witnesses forget. Witnesses die. Witnesses move away.
With all that being said, Pawar’s trial did begin on Feb. 23, 2023 with the victim taking the witness stand for the entire day and questioned by Crown counsel Aaron Burns. He took her in detail through the events leading up to and through the sexual assault incident.
In an opening statement, Burns outlined the case, that she was raped by Pawar on the bleachers at Chilliwack Secondary School in the early hours of July 18, 2018. Then on the next day of trial, cross examination of the victim by defence was scheduled, but at the start of the day the court heard that suddenly Pawar needed a Punjabi interpreter.
The only thing the judge could do without risking future grounds for an appeal was to grant the adjournment to wait for the interpreter.
Then in March 2023, Pawar’s lawyer filed an application that his rights under Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was breached involving an allegation of “lost or destroyed evidence.”
When he finally got to it, Pawar’s lawyer focused the conclusion of his case on the reliability of the alleged victim, questioning her memory, the fact that she was taking a prescription sedative, and the fact that she had self-harmed in the past.
Two other elements of the case Mohan focused on that he said should lead to reasonable doubt, is the lack of male DNA evidence found on the victim and the fact that there was some surveillance footage at CSS but none that showed the two at the bleachers.
“If you would find a decision of guilt, you would be saying you can put aside both the lack of DNA results and the lack of surveillance footage,” Mohan told Judge Andrea Ormiston.
“If the crown cannot prove its burden, that is not saying a crime did not happen, it is saying you cannot find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Crown counsel Aaron Burns, on the other hand, called it an overwhelming case of guilt, arguing that “the evidence presented can only lead to one conclusion, that Mr. Pawar sexually assaulted (the victim).”
He failed to rape N.M. at first, stopped, and she was terrified that he would kill her. He then pushed her down again and raped her on the bleachers, she testified.
As part of the evidence put forth regarding her truthfulness, Burns pointed to the victim’s personality and mood. Before the night she was a happy person, chatting daily with her good friend who lives in another city. After this night, everything went downhill.
“Something terrible happened that night that changed everything,” Burns said.
He added that in a message heard in court when she called a friend, “her voice sounded like her very soul had been penetrated.”
On June 29, 2023, Pawar was found guilty by Judge Ormiston.
A sentencing hearing was held in November at which victim-impact statements were read that said the incident caused “deep and long-standing suffering, the physical and psychological impact” that was “profound and life-changing” in its scope.
“The cumulative impact was nothing short of devastating.”
Judge Ormiston said it was an aggravating factor that Pawar “preyed on” her willingness to help him as a colleague to create a pretext of meeting in the middle of the night. This elevated Pawar’s moral culpability.
Judge Ormiston made a point to reject Pawar’s claim that he was “disadvantaged in his understanding of the laws of consent in Canada” as an immigrant.
“Mr. Pawar has spent most of his adult life in Canada. He has been educated and employed in this country, working in a hands-on, caring profession with the public,” she wrote in her decision.
“It’s incumbent on this court to distance itself from counsel’s suggestion that this sentence should send a strong message to the government to work harder in educating new immigrants.
“I agree there is a need to send a strong message that women cannot be objectified, humiliated and injured, but that message is to be sent to Mr. Pawar, and to any other person who would contemplate committing this kind of offence.”
“When I consider Mr. Pawar’s moral blameworthiness for this offence. I find that it is enormously high.”
Judge Ormiston sentenced him to 3.5 years custody. His lawyer asked that he not be taken into custody that day pending an appeal, but that was rejected.
Two years and three months after that sentencing, this Friday (Feb. 6, 2026), the case is scheduled before the BC Court of Appeal in Vancouver.
Visit Something Worth Reading for an update after the hearing and when a decision is rendered.
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Paul J. Henderson
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