Document text
Man gets jail, fine for wrecking restaurant �We couldn�t imagine who hated us that bad,� victim says By Dani Dodge Damandip Singh Basra was done in by his curry-crusted shoes. The son of the owner of Ashland�s Three Rivers Indian restaurant, Basra trashed a rival restaurant � India Palace in Medford � last November, apparently in a fit of jealously. Police found the key evidence to their case in Basra�s clothes dryer, where he�d stuffed his sneakers, still filthy with the pungent evidence of his crime � globs of golden red curry. Basra, 19, of Ashland, pled guilty to first-degree criminal mischief two weeks ago. On Friday, Judge Phil Arnold sentenced him to four months in jail and $48,000 in restitution for his crime. After going through photographs of the destroyed restaurant, Arnold said the crime showed "deliberate cruelty." "Some crimes, even though they are property crimes, have something about them that is shocking," Arnold said. "This crime has that. "It shows a real depravity to be able to commit such a crime." Although Basra�s attorney, Lisa Greif, asked the judge to allow her client several days to report to jail, Arnold had the bailiff immediately lead him away to begin his sentence. Tammy Kaur, who owns India Palace with her husband, Avtar Singh-Lilly, was so overjoyed that tears streamed down her face. "It�s been our fear he would flee," she said. "We are so happy to see him in jail. "Now he knows he can�t do something like this. I hope it�s a lesson he�s learned and that he will never do something like this again." Basra declined comment at the sentencing. Both Avtar Singh-Lilly and Basra�s family are from the same region in India, called Punjab. The families did not know each other before the incident, although they had common friends. In September, three employees left Basra�s father�s restaurant in a dispute over wages, Kaur said. She and her husband had been running India Palace alone for four years, but it was in a tiny shop in a poor location off on Crater Lake Avenue. When the former Three Rivers employees offered to work with them, they all decided to open a bigger and better restaurant in the Blue Sky Plaza on busy Biddle Road. All four of the Kaur children, aged 4 to 15, helped build the new restaurant, picking out flowers for the tables and painting the pink walls. On the day of the grand opening, Oct. 18, the Kaurs learned they were pregnant with another baby. Life seemed more than perfect. "We thought, �Things are definitely looking up,� " Kaur said. But then when they went to work on Nov. 10, they found disaster: spinach-spattered windows, smashed dishes, overturned tables and chairs, holes in the walls. The gas grills were toppled. Linens had been stuffed in the tandoori clay oven and set on fire. But the cash register that had been thrown to the floor still had money in it. The tip jar was full. The only items stolen were the security camera and its videotape. The Kaurs were frightened. "We couldn�t imagine who hated us that bad to do such a crime," Kaur said in court. "The fear was incredible." Police immediately began looking into Basra�s whereabouts that night. He had made some threats to the former Three Rivers employees. One had already left the country out of fear, Kaur said. At first, police didn�t find anything suspicious at the Basra home. Basra said he didn�t even know the location of India Palace. He�d been watching a rented video in his room that night, he said. None of the shoes in his closet matched the shoeprints found at the scene of the crime. Then an officer looked in the dryer. Officers looked in the washer and found curry-stained clothes. Officers played a videotape that was in the VCR � it was the tape missing from India Palace. Basra has previous convictions of first- and second-degree criminal mischief, deputy district attorney Karen Loomis said. After he has served his four-month sentence in Jackson County Jail, he will be deported because he is a Canadian citizen living in the United States illegally. "We don�t know if he will go back to Canada or India, but he won�t come back here," Greif said. The wanton destruction of India Palace galvanized the community. Strangers stopped by to give the Kaurs a hand in cleaning up. The restaurant reopened on Nov. 29. The restaurant has been doing well, Kaur said. "I�m just glad it�s open," she said Friday after the sentencing. "And now I can have my child in peace." Reach reporter Dani Dodge at 776-4471, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.