ONTARIO — A 30-something Sikh woman, Raman Devi, has died following a violent domestic incident at her residence in southeast London, Ontario, prompting police to arrest and charge her 41-year-old husband, Mandeep Singh, with second-degree murder. Authorities are officially treating the case as a femicide, marking the city’s fourth homicide of the year, while investigators closely review the prior history and dynamics of the couple’s relationship.
Emergency responders were called to the family’s residence on Chelton Road in the Summerside neighbourhood around 6:30 p.m. on September 15, where they discovered Devi suffering from critical, life-threatening trauma. Paramedics rushed her to a local hospital, where she subsequently succumbed to her injuries. Neighbours reported seeing Devi’s mother frantically flee the house with the couple’s two young children shortly before police cruisers converged on the scene. No other occupants sustained physical injuries.
The fatal attack has devastated the local community and classmates at triOS College, where Devi was five months away from graduating from a registered massage therapy program. Previously trained as a personal support worker, she had balanced her rigorous healthcare studies while raising her four-year-old son and seven-year-old daughter, supported by her mother who had travelled from India to assist with childcare. Close friends described her as an exceptionally kind, hardworking mother who was eagerly preparing to launch her professional therapy career.
The accused made an initial appearance in court by video link from the Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, where he requested the assistance of a Punjabi-language interpreter. He remains in custody pending further legal proceedings. Although recent legislative amendments to Canada’s Criminal Code reclassified certain intimate-partner killings involving coercive control as first-degree murder, prosecutors have formally laid a second-degree murder charge at this stage. Local women’s advocacy organizations, including Anova and the London Abused Women’s Centre, reiterated that intimate-partner violence cuts across all neighbourhoods and urged greater community vigilance and accessible support for vulnerable victims.
