Rajwinder Singh launches appeal to overturn conviction and sentence for Toyah Cordingley murder

Rajwinder Singh has launched an appeal against his conviction and sentence for the murder of Queensland woman Toyah Cordingley.

Singh, 42, will have his matter heard at a Court of Appeal hearing in Brisbane on Tuesday morning.

The father-of-three was last year sentenced to life in prison with a non-parole period of 25 years after being found guilty of murdering 24-year-old Toyah Cordingley in 2018.

A court found Singh stabbed and slashed Cordingley to death on Wangetti Beach in Far North Queensland before fleeing to India, where he spent four years in hiding.

Cordingley had been exercising on the beach with her dog when she was attacked and killed by Singh, before her body was discovered by her father in a shallow sand grave after she failed to return home.

Singh, a former nurse, was extradited from India and charged with her murder in 2022 and pleaded not guilty.

In March 2025, Singh’s first murder trial ended in a hung jury before a retrial in December found Singh had murdered Cordingley.

The court heard Singh left Australia for India the day after the murder, leaving his family behind, and did not contact them until his arrest in New Delhi more than four years later.

A DNA sample taken from a stick at the scene was 3.7 billion times more likely to come from Singh than anyone else.

“Some days it is still hard to believe she is no longer here physically with us, and the horrendous way she was taken from us,” Cordingley’s mother Vanessa Gardiner said after the guilty verdict last year.

“For us as a family, we will never forget this loveable, innocent, full-of-life young woman, and we will always wonder what could have been if her life was not cut so short.

“As far as the person who committed this murder and inflicted a horrible death on our daughter, it will never be forgiven by us.”