The Now Newspaper

SURREY - A former Surrey schoolteacher on trial for the murder of his pregnant wife staged a missing persons complaint with police in an attempt to conceal the crime, the Crown alleged Monday.

Mukhtiar Singh Panghali, 38, is being tried for second-degree murder and interfering with a dead body in the strangulation of his wife, Manjit Panghali, in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster.

The accused taught physics at Princess Margaret secondary school at the time, and his wife of nine years taught at North Ridge elementary school. She was four months pregnant at the time and the couple had a three-year-old daughter.

Crown prosecutor Dennis Murray outlined the Crown's case at the beginning of the trial on Monday morning.