When you walk through Maple Batalia’s childhood home, it doesn’t feel like she’s gone. The home is filled with pictures of her, as well as scrapbooks of memories and handwritten notes from loved ones. For her niece, Poonam Batalia, it feels like just yesterday that she lost her hero. “It feels like she’s going to walk through the door any moment. It’s been really hard to accept that she’s gone,” says Batalia. “She basically raised us. My parents weren’t in the picture much so she did everything.” Maple Batalia was shot to death in the parking lot of Simon Fraser University’s Surrey campus by her ex-boyfriend Gurjinder Dhaliwal. Dhaliwal killed her after seeing her with a male classmate in on Sept. 28, 2011—15 years ago Monday. Batalia’s niece says she remembers the years of abuse. “There were times where she didn’t want to talk, or where she had to step out of the room to talk to him. She was really good at putting on a mask and acting like everything was fine.” Dhaliwal pleaded guilty to gunning down his ex-girlfriend and is serving 21 years of a life sentence before he is eligible for parole. On the anniversary of the killing, Maple Batalia’s family hopes her story can help victims of intimate partner violence, and are calling for more systemic change. “I don’t know what kind of precautions we could have taken, he violated her no contact order and still took her life that night,” says Rosy Batalia, the deceased’s sister. Two bursaries have been set up in her honour helping SFU Health Sciences and Emily Carr students pursue their dreams. “Those bursaries are a living monument, if you will, of her legacy and what she wanted to do with her life,” the sister said. A park bench has also been built and a maple tree planted in the young woman’s memory. For her family, nothing can bring her back and there is frustration at the justice system that Dhaliwal won’t be in prison for life. “This was calculated, planned and to me that proves that he’s a threat to society,” says Poonam Batalia, fighting tears. “Someone who can calculate something so heinous and act like nothing big happened. That’s just not OK.”
