The council says an assessment of Panghali’s remedial plan in May found he has shown increased responsibility and behavioral improvements and has been downgraded from high to medium risk of needing intervention. Panghali, a former high school teacher in Surrey, BC, reported his wife Manjit Panghali missing in October 2006. Police discovered her badly burned body five days later. An investigation eventually determined that Panghali strangled his wife in their home and then moved her body to neighboring Delta, BC, to try to cover up the crime. He was arrested in 2007 and charged with second degree murder. In 2011 he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 15 years. Panghali has been in a minimum-security prison since 2016. The parole board said in its ruling that he appears to have accepted responsibility for his actions and made notable efforts to change, despite initially pleading not guilty and unsuccessfully appealing his sentence in 2012. “Reports indicated that you expressed deep regret for your ‘regressive and rather archaic attitudes and beliefs about marriage and intimate relationships,’” the board said in its statement, adding that Panghali completed a course on anger management, non-violent communication and community integration while in prison. “[Correctional Services Canada] indicated that there is little more you can do in an institutional setting to address your risk factors as you have exhausted the available programming,” they said. Mukhtiar Pangali appears in a courtroom sketch while on trial for his wife’s murder. (CBC) The parole board noted that Panghali had participated in 50 escorted temporary absences as well as some unescorted leaves to visit family, all “without any problems”. According to the petition granting his parole, Panghali respects his daughter’s wishes to have no contact. She is being raised by Manjit Panghali’s sister.

The women’s advocate is “sick” of the release decision

Ninu Kang, executive director of the Ending Violence Association of British Columbia, says hearing that Panghali was given a day’s parole brought her back to where he killed his wife. “Honestly, I’m fed up,” she told the CBC, adding that she remembers thinking about quitting at the time. “This particular crime, followed by many other South Asian women who were murdered in the community … was too much for me,” she said. Ninu Kang, with the End Violence Association of BC, says the news of Mukhtiar Pangali’s day release could make other victims of gender-based violence feel like “there’s no justice.” (Tina Lovgreen/CBC) Kang says she immediately thought of the life of a young woman and her unborn child taken away, and the impact the “horrific” killing had on Manjit Panghali’s daughter, family and loved ones. She is also concerned about how the news might affect other women who have been victims of gender-based violence. “Sometimes I feel like there’s no justice,” he said. “A woman can be killed and the person who killed her can, within a few years of being behind bars, get out and … live with relative freedom.” Kang says she believes in educating men to understand that women are their equals and teaching them how to “show up differently as men” in today’s society. He also hopes to see better protections for victims. “I think the justice system needs to continue to do a better job in terms of policies, practices,” he said. “To make sure that victims are safe and that victims have their rights. “And I think we need to do a better job … making sure that behavior is curbed and that women and non-binary people are safer in our society.”

Parole

Conditions imposed on Panghali during his six-month conditional license include not drinking alcohol or using drugs, having no contact with the victim’s family and reporting all relationships and attempts to start relationships with women to a parole supervisor . While the parole board said it believed Panghali could successfully reintegrate into society, it said the “serious and violent nature” of his crime was not lost on them. “Your actions were cruel and vicious and left the victim’s family seriously traumatized,” the report says, adding that these are still considered aggravating factors. The board said the fact that Pagali has no prior criminal record was a mitigating factor in its decision.