Maryland judge orders third trial in Raminder Kaur murder case

A Maryland judge ordered a third trial in the Raminder Kaur case, returning a Montgomery County murder prosecution to court more than a decade after Preeta Gabba was shot and killed near her Germantown home. The order keeps alive one of the region’s most closely watched domestic-killing cases and gives prosecutors one more chance to secure a verdict that will hold up under review.

Police charged Raminder Kaur and Baldeo Taneja in Gabba’s death in October 2013. Jurors later convicted both of murder, and WTOP reported in January 2017 that Kaur received two life sentences. The case had already moved from the original homicide investigation into a long appellate fight by the time the third-trial order landed.

The paper trail is unusually long. A Maryland Court of Special Appeals opinion filed June 7, 2019, identified the Montgomery County circuit-court case as 123592. Kaur then took the fight into federal court, where the Fourth Circuit heard argument in Kaur v. Warden on January 29, 2025, before issuing a decision on August 19, 2025, in case No. 24-6440. The Maryland Criminal Defense Attorneys’ Association filed an amicus brief supporting Kaur in that appeal.

The case also reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied certiorari. In a statement respecting that denial, Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticized prosecutors’ access to privileged defense communications, a rare rebuke that underscored how closely the legal system has scrutinized the prosecution’s handling of the case.

A third trial is a major reset in a murder prosecution that has already produced convictions, life sentences, a state appellate opinion and federal habeas litigation. It sends the case back to the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, where the state will again have to present the killing of Preeta Gabba, the evidence against Kaur and Taneja, and the same core facts in a way that can survive another round of challenge.

For Gabba’s family and for the courtroom teams that have litigated this case for years, the new trial means the Germantown shooting is back at the center of the record. The case that began with a 2013 homicide now returns to the same question that has followed it through every appeal: whether this verdict can finally stick.