Lawyer raises cultural issues to help mother
charged with attempted murder
R S Shankar
In a region where multi-ethnicity and multiculturalism has become controversial, Christina Briles, a court appointed lawyer in Ventura County near Los Angeles, is taking the risk of using a cultural argument to help Narinder Virk.
Virk has been charged with the attempted murder of her two children.
She will make the argument in the presence of the two children, Sonny, 9 and Harpreet, 6 who are expected to appear in the court this week at their mother's preliminary hearing.
The court has set a $500,000 bond bail for 39-year-old Virk, who has been in a suicide watch in jail for more than two weeks.
Virk, who hardly speaks English and has no source of income, is not a flight risk, her supporters who did not know her till her arrest, say.
She is not a heartless person, they argue. They believe she tried to kill herself and the children in order to escape what she thought was a bad name - and poverty.
Her supporters who are raising money for her bail are prepared to pledge their homes and savings. Among her strongest supporters is Dr Amarjit Marwah, who has made Southern California his home for more than three decades, and is known as the dean of the Indian community.
Virk is "a country girl," he said, who was still trying to follow a subservient gender role not found in modern Indian homes.
At worst, Virk is an example of human frailty, her supporters say.
She cannot flee to India, they say, adding that many people in the community have offered to help her find a new home and start life anew even as the trial will continue.
Virk's lawyer, who is seeking psychiatric help for her, will present her as a woman who was driven to the wall, who because of her cultural roots could not bring herself to reveal the indignities and abuse her husband heaped on.
In a desperate mood she sought to drown her daughter and son in Channel Island Harbor. But the three were rescued by a couple in a nearby house.
Briles, unlike many court appointed lawyers, is passionate about her client. She will argue that Virk was afraid she will be condemned by the community if she discussed her alleged misery at the hand of her abusive husband.
But the day she learned her husband, who had returned to India, was going to divorce her, her mind flipped, and she decided kill herself and the two children.
"Her life had value only as it related to others that she served," Briles told reporters. "The female has the complete and total responsibility for the success of the marriage."
According to Briles, Virk who married Santokh Singh Virk, lived together in India from 1978 to 1984 and then her husband came to America in search of a job.
Briles said he married another woman for citizenship in 1984 and then filed for divorce two years later. Ten years ago, according to Briles, he reconnected to Narinder, and soon they had a son.
Their relationship began deteriorating soon, and he began abusing her, Briles noted. While her client endured the abuses and humiliations for many years, what she could not stand was the shame of being a divorced, abandoned woman.
Her husband, who returned from India a week ago and is running his liquor shop, has refused to comment on the case. The two children are being looked after by relatives.
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