By Ethan Baron, The Province

NEW WESTMINSTER -- A Surrey cab driver stabbed his wife to death after she threatened to turn their son against him, he testified Friday.

Jatinder Wariach, 25, testified that just before the killing, he and Navreet had been arguing, with his wife demanding that he pay all costs for her parents to immigrate to Canada. He had already signed over to her one-third of his $220,000 share in his cab, jurors heard.

He'd refused and during an argument in their Surrey basement suite she told him she was leaving and would take their son, Bharmveer, to India, where her parents still lived, he said.

"You know my parents," Waraich claims Navreet threatened. "They are going to train him so much that he will spit on you and your parents," he testified.

"When she said that, I lost my control and I felt very much insulted," he said.

"She screamed and it was a very loud scream," he said.

He said he put a hand over her mouth and she bit him hard.

"I stabbed once with that knife," Waraich testified. "After that I don't have much memory."

Navreet Waraich was found dead of dozens of stab wounds in October 2006 in the couple's Surrey basement suite.

Outside court, Navreet's father, Dilbag Singh Gill, strongly disputed Waraich's characterization of the relationship.

"What [Gill] would like the community to remember," a translator said, "is that his daughter is the one who is the victim here and not Mr. Waraich."

In earlier testimony Friday in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster, Waraich said he felt "love at first sight" when a cousin showed him a picture of Navreet.

His parents didn't want him to marry her and consulted an astrologer, he said.

"There's a little river in our town and [the astrologer] told me not to marry north of that river, and that my marriage won't last and that there will be fighting and arguments [my] whole life," he testified.

Navreet came from north of the river, but he married her anyway. He returned to Canada where she joined him four months later.

The couple lived with his parents in Delta, he said. "For the first two months, we never asked her to do any chores," he said. "We thought 'She's new to Canada, she should just look around.'"

Problems arose when they told her after two months that she had to do chores and work, he claimed.

Navreet worked irregularly packing televisions for a time, he said.

Navreet wanted him to sponsor her parents, brother and sister and cousin to come to Canada, but he told her they didn't have enough income for the application, he testified.

She wanted him to declare false income, he said. "I didn't want to do anything illegal," he claimed.

He said he inflated his taxi-driving income and didn't declare expenses, and his mother's boss offered Navreet a job as a cleaner.

She refused to do cleaning work, he said, but the boss began giving her another woman's pay to show income. They would then return the money to the boss.

Court heard earlier this week that Waraich told an undercover cop he had stabbed Navreet 35 times on Oct. 29, 2007, her 27th birthday, saying he "lost it" after a series of daily arguments.

The trial continues.