An Indian man has been extradited to Australia on suspicion of murdering a woman, who was found dead on a remote Queensland beach.
Rajwinder Singh arrived in Melbourne on Wednesday after being flown from Delhi with detectives. He is charged with the of Toyah Cordingley, 24, in a “frenzied and brutal” attack.
According to the BBC, Mr Singh will appear in court in Melbourne before being transferred to Queensland state. He will then appear in front of a magistrate in Brisbane, most likely later this week, before being remanded in custody.
This Indian man was arrested in Delhi last November after the Queensland state government offered a A$1 million (£555,000; $672,000) reward for information about the killing.
Indian police handed him over to Australian officers at Delhi’s international airport on Tuesday night local time over the 2018 beach murder. Originally from Buttar Kalan in the Indian state of Punjab, Mr Singh had been living in Innisfail at the time of the killing, a town about two hours from the crime scene.
Police allege that the 38-year-old fled Australia in the hours following the murder of a woman and that he had remained in Punjab for four years to avoid arrest. Indian officers detained him after receiving information that Mr Singh was on his way to the Indian capital for a medical appointment. Detectives have revealed few details about Ms Cordingley’s death.
On 21 October 2018, she went to Wangetti Beach, between the popular tourist destinations of Cairns and Port Douglas, to walk her dog but never returned.
Her father discovered her body the next day, half-buried in sand dunes. The A$1 million reward is the most generous ever offered in Queensland. Toyah’s father, Troy Cordingley, stated last year that his daughter was “a young woman who will never get the chance to live a full life and all that entails… this was taken away from her”.
At the time of Mr Singh’s arrest, Queensland Police Minister Mark Ryan said the development had been “a long time coming” and marked “the next stage of delivering justice for Toyah”.
