Que. father says he consumed fentanyl before drowning children, has no memory of killings

At his murder trial in Laval, Kamalijit Arora testified he has no memory of the day his 13-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son drowned in their home.

A Quebec man who drowned his two children in October 2022 in their family home near Montreal told a jury on Wednesday he doesn’t have any memories from the day they died.

Kamaljit Arora was on the stand for a second consecutive day at his murder trial in Laval, Que., a suburb north of Montreal.

Arora has admitted to causing the deaths of the two children, but has pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder, the attempted murder of his older daughter Jasmine and the strangulation of his wife Rama Rani Arora.

A publication ban has been placed on the names of the two young victims.

The Crown, which has completed presenting evidence, intends to prove that Arora’s actions were premeditated.

• READ ALSO: Wife sobs as she recounts discovery of drowned kids at husband’s murder trial

Arora, 49, said Wednesday he consumed fentanyl on the day of the killings and has no recollection about drowning his 13-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son in their Laval home. He said he doesn’t remember anything from the moment right after he took fentanyl to the time he woke up handcuffed in hospital a few weeks later.

Arora testified that until late 2025, he didn’t accept that he was responsible for the children’s deaths. “I heard a lot of things but I was not accepting it was me,” he said.

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The trial has heard that Arora had been suffering mental health issues since 2020 including a severe depression. He said that leading up to the killings he had purchased what he thought was fentanyl with the intent of dying by suicide.

Under cross-examination, the Crown brought up the mounting tension surrounding his marriage and with his wife’s extended family. Arora admitted that since 2017 — and right up to the moment he drowned the children — his wife had been demanding a divorce, but he said he had always refused because he felt his wife wouldn’t have been able to take care of their three children without him.

Prosecutor Claudia Carbonneau suggested that if Arora had been successful in his 2022 suicide attempt, he would have left her alone with the children.

“When you are under depression, you can’t analyze things … (like) when you are normal,” Arora said. “Suicide, I never thought about anything else.”

The Crown confronted Arora with statements from a March 2023 police interview in which he said his wife’s family owed him more than $80,000 — a debt he said had frustrated him in the months before the killings. He also told police he had to borrow money from his father for the down payment on the family home.

Arora told jurors that one of his relatives was a primary source of conflict in his marriage, saying the man had undue influence over his wife. The relative’s influence was partly why the family moved to Winnipeg for about one month in 2020, Arora said, adding that during that period his mental health issues were aggravated because he couldn’t find suitable work. 

After the family returned to Laval, Arora faced a number of mental-health hospitalizations, and he told the court he considered or attempted suicide at least seven times beginning in 2021. 

On the witness stand, he downplayed the frustrations he had told police about in the 2023 interview. Arora said Wednesday that his anger toward his wife for serving him separation papers had coloured the responses he gave police. He denied holding grudges against anyone.

Carbonneau confronted him with the fact his wife had accused him of having an affair, which had come to light in 2014. He denied being unfaithful and told jurors his wife had been “weaponizing” the alleged affair in arguments.

Often in his testimony he said he wouldn’t speak ill of her. “Yeah she did something but now everything is finished,” Arora said. “I don’t want to say anything wrong about my wife.”

The trial has heard the couple married in 2003 and came to Canada in 2015 from India in search of a better life for their children.

As for his children, Arora said he shared a strong bond with them, adding that his love for them was part of the reason he couldn’t accept he had harmed them.

“They were a piece of my heart,” Arora testified.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 18, 2026.

Sidhartha Banerjee, The Canadian Press