MANJIT PANGHALI'S FAMILY BATTLES TO SEE THEIR GRAND DAUGHTER

Surrey: It started sometime last week. Mukhtiar Panghali suddenly and abruptly on January 29 2007 refused to let Manjit's family members meet their grand daughter. Manjit's family members have been given access rights to the child, wherein every Monday they could meet her for a couple of hours. But last to last Monday Manjit's father, mother and sister came home disappointed. Jasmine Bamra (Manjit's Sister) then went to the court again.
On Feburary 2 2007, I happened to be at the Surrey Provincial Court covering some other case when I saw Mukhtiar Panghali. The matter was not clear to me then. But when I tried to talk to him, he backed off saying "no comments." His lawyer, who I didn't even want to talk to, flared up and was very rude. I keep meeting lawyers every now and then, but none have shown such attitude. I then spoke to Jasmine and she explained the whole story to me.
Both the families, Mukhtiar, his brother and sister-in-law, and Jasmine, her husband, father and mother met again at the court on Tuesday Jan 13. Mukhtiar claims that his daughter hurt herself when she was visiting her mother's family. And, Jasmine says that it never happened. The judge tried his best to resolve the matter to avoid a trial by suggesting supervised visiting. He (judge) suggested that an independent agency ComCare can be present at all time when the child visits her maternal grand parents, but Mr. Mukhtiar declined all suggestions and asked his lawyer to call for a trial, which is on Friday, Feb 16.
This time, there were other journalists as well from Province, CTV, Global, and Channel M. After the hearing all of us (reporters) waited for hours for Mukhtiar to come out of the court to take his comment. But he kept hiding. Finally when he did come out, he straightaway walked to his car where his brother and sister in law were sitting. He was bombarded with questions from the media, he didn’t utter a word, didn't even look at any of us, bumped into CTV's reporter, sat in the car and took off.
Jasmine later told me that Mukhtiar is now planning to shift to Victoria for good.
At the trial on Feb 16, both the parties will present witnesses. Muktiar's family will try to prove that the child was injured and Manjit's family will try to prove the opposite.