More than a month after a crash at a Perth shopping centre carpark took the life of 19-year-old Indian international student Komalpreet Kaur, a teenager has been charged with careless driving causing death.
Western Australia Police charged the 19-year-old Forrestfield man on Saturday, 21 June, following an investigation by the Major Crash Investigation Section into the incident at Bentley Plaza on Albany Highway on 16 May 2026. The accused is scheduled to appear before the Armadale Magistrates Court on 3 July.
What happened at Bentley Plaza
Kaur was struck by a blue Hyundai i30 in the Bentley Plaza carpark at around 11.30 pm and became trapped beneath the vehicle. Bystanders rushed to help. Witnesses said a group of around 10 to 12 people worked together to lift the car while others called emergency services. A bystander began performing CPR before paramedics arrived. Kaur was taken to Royal Perth Hospital with critical injuries and later died.
Police had previously said the driver and Kaur were known to each other. Witnesses reported that the young man was pleading for an ambulance to be called at the scene.
Who was Komalpreet Kaur?
Kaur had arrived in Australia from Punjab’s Ludhiana district just 11 months before her death. She moved to Perth in July 2025, the eldest of three siblings, with the hopes of building a career and a future for herself and her family. Her father, Amrik Singh, is a retired Subedar of the Indian Army from Raikot.
She was studying community services at Stanley College and working part-time alongside her studies. Like many Indian international students in Australia, she was here on the strength of loans her family had taken out back home, carrying both the opportunity and the financial weight that came with it.
Friends described her as someone who brought warmth to everyone around her. “She was charming, always smiling. She filled our lives with happiness,” friend Sakshi Rupal told the media after the crash.
A GoFundMe page set up in her memory raised over A$82,000, well past its original A$50,000 target. The funds were intended to cover funeral expenses and the cost of repatriating her body to India. Her family had not yet finished repaying the loans taken to send her to Australia, and arranging to bring her home added an estimated A$14,000 to a burden that was already unbearable. Kaur’s family appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Droupadi Murmu to assist with those repatriation costs, given her father’s years of service in the Indian Army. Kaur is survived by her parents, a younger sister aged 18, and a brother aged 14.
The charge and what it carries
Under Section 62 of the Road Traffic Act 1974 (WA), careless driving causing death carries a maximum penalty of three years imprisonment or a fine of 720 penalty units, along with a mandatory minimum licence disqualification of three months. It is a less serious charge than dangerous driving causing death, which carries a maximum of 20 years under Section 59 of the same Act.
The distinction between the two charges typically turns on the degree of departure from the standard of a careful and prudent driver. That is a matter the court will weigh when the case is heard at Armadale Magistrates Court on 3 July. WA Police’s Major Crash Investigation Section continues to examine the circumstances of the crash.
A pattern the community knows well
The death of Komalpreet Kaur shook Perth’s Indian community in May and drew grief from Indian students and families across Australia. Her case is not the first to raise concerns about the safety and welfare of young Indians who come to study here, often living alone, working part-time shifts late into the night, and far from the family networks that might otherwise be looking out for them.
The broader picture is one familiar to anyone following Indian student welfare in Australia: students arriving on tight budgets, working to cover living costs, and navigating a country they are still getting to know. For their families back in India, news of a tragedy abroad arrives not just as grief but as the collapse of everything a loan and a plane ticket were meant to build.
