Canadian resident Parminder Singh Pannu is not a happy man. He misses his new bride who is still stuck in India. The Canadian government won’t let her into the country to live with her man because they don’t believe the two are legitimately married. Why the suspicion? Well, just look at their wedding picture. They don’t look very happy. The Vancouver Sun reports:

Delta resident Parminder Singh Pannu thought his luck had changed when he married his second wife Ranjit in India in November 2002.

Almost three years earlier, his first wife Anupinder died of breast cancer at 43, leaving him a widower. And three years before that, he nearly died when he was sliced from head to hip by a dagger at Surrey’s Guru Nanak temple during a protest by fundamentalist Sikhs.

But Pannu is more frustrated than ever now because the federal Immigration Department is refusing to allow his 36-year-old bride into the country, calling the marriage bogus…

“Your marriage is not genuine and was entered into primarily for the purpose of acquiring permanent residence in Canada,” a 2005 rejection letter states…

One of the government rejection letters said the pair looks too stiff in some pictures to be a real married couple.

Pannu tried to explain to the Immigration people that Sikhs aren’t down with PDA. THAT is why they look so stiff:

Family friend and community activist Gurnam Singh Sanghera said the comment is outrageous and shows the Canadian official does not understand Sikh culture, in which public shows of affection are not typical.

“I have probably never hugged my wife in public,” Sanghera said Sunday. “How can they tell this from a picture? Are they psychic?”

Pannu’s son Byron is getting married pretty soon:

Byron is getting engaged in December and was hoping his stepmother could finally be here to perform the role of mother in the ceremony marking his pending marriage.

I have just one piece of advice for Byron: Smile during the wedding pics.

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Singapore’s hangman is a semi-retired 73 year old desi named Darshan Singh. This man, who looks like any other jolly uncle on the street, has executed over 850 prisoners in his 46 years at the job.

Darshan Singh holds the world’s record for executions: 18 men in one day, three at a time. He takes real pride in his work, bragging that he has never botched an execution. The government pays him $312 for each execution and he gets to dress casually at his job, “often just a T-shirt, shorts, sports shoes and knee-length socks.” [Link]

His next execution is likely to be that of convicted Australian drug trafficker Van Tuong Nguyen.

Nguyen will meet Mr Singh a few days before he is executed and will be asked if he would like to donate his organs.

On the day before his execution, Mr Singh will lead him to a set of scales close to his death-row cell to weigh him.

Mr Singh will use the Official Table of Drops, published by the British Home Office in 1913, to calculate the correct length of rope for the hanging. “I am going to send you to a better place than this. God bless you.”

On the day of Nguyen’s execution, Mr Singh will be picked up by a government vehicle and driven to the prison, arriving at 2am local time (0400 AEST) to prepare the gallows.

Shortly before 6am, he will handcuff Nguyen’s hands behind his back and lead him on his final short walk to the gallows, just a few metres from the cell.

… Darshan Singh will place a rope around the 25-year-old’s neck and say the words he has spoken to more than 850 condemned prisoners during his 46 years as Singapore’s chief executioner.

“I am going to send you to a better place than this. God bless you.”

[According to his colleague:] “Death has always come instantaneously and painlessly. In that split second, at precisely 6am, it’s all over.” [Link]