Father accused of killing son’s in-laws as they watched TV to face trial, Fresno judge says
An emotional Jaideep Kaur testified in court Wednesday about finding her parents shot in the head as they sat on a sofa watching television.
Dabbing tears from her eyes, Kaur said she was shocked when she realized the shooter was her 70-year-old father-in-law, Darshan Singh Dhanjan.
Dhanjan was arrested and charged with two counts of murder and criminal threats for the 2018 killing of Ravinder Pal Singh, 59, and Rajbir Kaur, 62. His preliminary hearing was held Wednesday and Judge F. Brian Alvarez found enough evidence to send his case to trial.
Police suspect Dhanjan was angry that his son, Danny Dhanjan, allowed his in-laws Ravinder and Rajbir to move into the son’s home in the 5300 block of East Tower Avenue in southeast Fresno County.
Darshan Dhanjan also lived in the home. His wife would visit during the day but mostly stayed with her daughter at night.
Danny Dhanjan testified that his father had begun arguing more frequently with his wife’s parents. He would try to mediate the squabbles, but as a long haul trucker who was away from home often, he was finding it increasingly difficult to do.
He installed a camera in the home’s living room to figure out who was instigating the arguments.
Dhanjan never could have imagined what the video camera would capture on Sept. 9, 2018. He testified that his wife was the first person to tell him what happened.
Prosecutor Kelly Smith asked Dhanjan what he saw on the living room camera he installed.
“I saw my in-laws sitting on the couch watching TV when Darshan walks up and shoots them in the head,” he testified. “You couldn’t see his face, but you could see a little below his shoulders and down to his feet. And those were the clothes my father wore.”
Danny Dhanjan’s wife testified that when she heard the gunshots she ran downstairs and found her father-in-law standing at the foot of the stairs holding a gun in his hand.
“I asked him ‘what did he do?” and he told me he was going to kill me too,” Kaur said. “I went back upstairs and I could hear him coming up behind me and I locked the door.”
A surveillance camera installed on the outside of the home caught his father leaving the house shortly after the shooting and driving away in his car, Danny Dhanjan testified.
Dhanjan said he contacted his father by phone that day and asked him directly what he had done.
“He said, ‘oh yes, I did,’” Dhanjan testified. “We both knew what were were talking about.”
Although family members said Darshan Dhanjan was not known to have a gun, a search warrant uncovered a credit card receipt for use of a shooting range in Clovis. The date of the receipt was Sept. 8, 2019, one day before the shooting.
The defendant will be arraigned on Nov. 28 and is being held with no bail at the Fresno County Jail.
This story was originally published November 10, 2022 at 5:30 AM.
