A disgruntled employee who told police that his boss had tried to pay him to disfigure his estranged wife had motive to lie, a B.C. Supreme Court judge said on Friday in Chilliwack.
Justice Brian Joyce ruled that the employer, Jagsir Singh Sidhu of Abbotsford, was not guilty of the charge of counselling an indictable offence not committed.
Crown lawyer Wayne Norris alleged that Sidhu, who owns a printing company in Abbotsford, had offered to pay former employee Duane Waite to disfigure the face of his wife with either a razor blade or acid.
It was also alleged that Sidhu wanted Waite to throw a Molotov cocktail into the home of his wife's grandparents.
Waite testified that Sidhu was to pay him $5,000 for each offence, but he wouldn't receive the funds unless the home was "three-quarters destroyed."
Sidhu and his wife were in the midst of divorce proceedings at the time, and Sidhu believed she was asking for too much money in the settlement, Norris alleged.
He said the attacks were meant to be a message for her to back off and to make her unattractive to other men.
Waite, who began working for Sidhu in 2008, testified that Sidhu had about two dozen conversations with him – from spring 2010 to January 2011 – about attacking his wife.
He said Sidhu became more serious in October 2010, but Waite had no intention of following through, and he kept stalling.
Waite said he reported the situation to Sidhu's wife in January 2011, and she drove him to the police department to file a report.
Sidhu was arrested and charged the following month.
Evidence was presented in court that Waite had been laid off from his job with Sidhu's company because he didn't have a driver's licence due to owing thousands of dollars to ICBC.
He was also evicted from the building where he was living, which Sidhu owned, because the building was being sold.
Waite testified in court that he had been angry about these issues.
Sidhu testified that he did not have any conversations with Waite about harming his wife, but he received two phone calls from him demanding money.
One of those conversations was on speaker phone and was overheard by another one of Sidhu's employees. That woman testified that Waite had demanded $5,000 from Sidhu.
Joyce said he had "serious problems" with Waite's credibility and the reliability of his evidence.
He said Waite has 14 criminal offences on his record, has a history of illegal drug use, and contradicted his testimony on several occasions.
Joyce said Waite's job loss and eviction were motives for him to get back at Sidhu by lying to police.
Sidhu, on the other hand, was "clear, calm and consistent" in his testimony and made a credible witness, the judge said.
He said, based on Waite's testimony, he could not find Sidhu guilty of the allegations.