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Missing Fort Myers Woman's Family Lose Hope

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By BRIAN SKOLOFF, The Associated Press

Published: December 3, 2007

FORT MYERS - Kultar Goraya is nervous. His wife, Rupinder, disappeared two months ago. Police say he is the only "person of interest" and they can't get a single straight story out of him.

Soon after Rupinder vanished, he abandoned his job and took their handicapped 3-year-old son, Sam, back to their native India, then abruptly returned to Florida with the boy when relatives demanded to know what happened to his wife.

During a recent interview in his sparsely furnished apartment, he sat on the couch with his arms crossed, hands tightly tucked under his armpits, rocking back and forth. He occasionally chewed his cuticles and alternated his stare from ceiling to floor. He guzzled water. He proclaimed his innocence.

"I love too much my wife," said Kultar, 33. "Many things I am thinking ... I don't know why she is doing this. She has not called me."

He said Rupinder was having affairs with two men. Maybe she ran off with a lover, he speculated. Maybe she is with friends. However, he couldn't provide credible names for people he said she knew well. He supplied a telephone number for one woman, but she said she didn't know Rupinder.

Fort Myers police cite similar changes in Kultar's stories. They said they have found no evidence of another man. Friends and relatives say that was not Rupinder's character, and she wouldn't have run off. Personal items were found in her apartment that she wouldn't have left behind.

Detectives say that while Kultar's stories changed too much during their two interviews with him to be believable, they don't have enough grounds to arrest him.

"There's no one piece of physical evidence that we have right now that she has met with foul play," Detective Jeff Nibarger said. "However, all things considered, it certainly looks suspicious."

Kultar, Rupinder and Sam moved to Florida last year from India's Punjab state. Rupinder, 34, was participating in a nursing exchange program, but had been on leave from Southwest Florida Regional Medical Center to recover from a hysterectomy performed after a cancer diagnosis. Kultar worked as a convenience store clerk.

Their five-year marriage was arranged and they never seemed happy, said Rupinder's aunt, Parneet Othee, who lives in Virginia.

In May, Kultar was arrested for allegedly choking his wife in a drunken rage. Police said he threatened to kill her, but the couple later reconciled. He admits his relationship with his wife was shaky.

Kultar said he last saw her on Oct. 2. He had been napping when she came in and "kissed my forehead" and said she was going to Orlando to catch a flight to New York to visit a hospital where she hoped to work.

Her relatives don't buy the New York story, saying she had no desire to leave a job she liked in Florida.

Her cell phone calls and credit card activity all go cold after that day, detectives said. She missed a doctor's appointment.

Kultar never reported his wife missing, authorities said, but her hospital colleagues did on Oct. 19, more than two weeks after he says she left.

Adding to suspicions, four days before her colleagues filed that report, Kultar made what police say was a hastily planned trip back to India with his son.

"If your wife was missing, would you leave the country?" Nibarger asked.

He soon returned. Othee said he wasn't welcomed by his relatives in India, who were angry that he couldn't explain what happened to his wife.

In the interview, Kultar rambles, sometimes incoherently, and switches thoughts mid-sentence.

"My wife is scared," he said. But he couldn't explain what may have frightened her.

Asked about his domestic abuse arrest, Kultar first said: "I slapped my wife only one time."

Prodded, he backtracked and said he never hit her.

"Verbal only," he said, then changed the topic.

"She is playing with me," he snapped. "When she comes back, I want a divorce ... Everybody is saying to me 'Where is Rupinder? Where is Rupinder?'

"I don't know," he said.

Nicole Cox, 21, who lives in an apartment below the Gorayas, said something never seemed right with the couple. Rupinder was outgoing and friendly, "a sweet lady," while Kultar seemed distant and unpredictable.

"He just seemed to be one of those people who could change his personality in a split second," Cox said.

She said Rupinder would never have left without her son. "She was so kind and so sweet and so caring with Sam. If she wanted to leave, she would have taken him," Cox said.

Rupinder's aunt is worried. "Because of the previous circumstance when he choked her, that makes me fear now," Othee said.

Detectives fear the worst.

"The circumstances surrounding her disappearance just aren't normal. It's just that in this instance, things are leading us to believe she may not be OK," Sgt. Jennifer Soto said.

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