Queensland police has told a Melbourne court it has DNA evidence linking a man extradited from India to the death of Toyah Cordingley.
Rajwinder Singh, 38, was escorted by Queensland police on a Qantas flight from Delhi to Melbourne that arrived this afternoon.
Within hours Mr Singh made a brief appearance in the Melbourne Magistrates Court, where he was remanded in custody.
Ms Cordingley was found dead on a beach north of Cairns in 2018 and her case shocked the community. He is expected to face charges over Ms Cordingley's death.
A hearing for Mr Singh's extradition to Cairns was suspended until Thursday, as arrangements for his transfer are made.
Queensland police Acting Superintendent Kevin Goan told the court Mr Singh went to India in the days following Ms Cordingley's death.
"Investigators relied upon DNA evidence which links Mr Singh to her homicide," he said.
Acting Superintendent Goan said police also had telephone evidence, linking the movement of mobile phones belonging to Ms Cordingley and Mr Singh, which were tracked to the western side of Cairns.
Mr Singh, who was wearing a black turban and black jumper, sat calmly in the court dock while flanked by two security guards.
In November last year, Mr Singh was arrested in India, bringing to an end a years-long search that began when he flew to India's northern Punjab region, the day after Ms Cordingley's body was found.
Escorted by seven police officers, he was taken from South Asia's largest jail, Delhi's Tihar Prison, to the airport where he checked into the flight.
Police say Mr Singh flew to India's northern Punjab region on October 23, 2018, the day after Ms Cordingley's body was found.
At the gate of the flight, Mr Singh, an Australian citizen of Indian origin, was handed from Indian authorities to Queensland police, who took charge of his journey back to Australia.
Outside court in Melbourne, Superintendent Goan said a "number of logistical issues" were being worked through, and the exact timeframe for Mr Singh's extradition to Cairns was unclear.
He said Ms Cordingley's family was "clearly overwhelmed" and "delighted".
"Toyah's family has been included every step of the way in this process," he said.
For Ms Cordingley's family, they may finally get the answers they have been searching for since the day she died.
Toyah's last day
Ms Cordingley's last day, October 21, 2018, began like any other.
At the end of a week working her regular job at a Cairns wholefoods pharmacy, the 24-year-old started her Sunday with a mooch around Rusty's Markets, before heading out to the beach.
Around 2pm, she parked her light blue Mitsubishi Lancer at Wangetti and bundled her dog Indie onto the sand.
But hours later, her family began to worry that Ms Cordingley still hadn't returned home.
As night fell, they headed to the beach and set out with torches to look for her, desperate to find the young woman alive.
Eventually, they spotted the lovable German shepherd cross mastiff, unharmed and tied to a tree. But there was no sign of Ms Cordingley.
The search party returned home to regroup and Ms Cordingley was officially reported missing at 10:50pm.
SES began a sea and air search in the early hours of Monday morning, but it wasn't until Ms Cordingley's father Troy took police back to the spot where they had found Indie that they made a heartbreaking discovery.
Around 7:45am on Monday, Troy found his daughter's body in the dunes.
Ms Cordingley's injuries, which police described as "visible and violent", were so upsetting that her father had to be carried from the scene.
"Toyah is my only child. Finding her body has burnt an indelible image in my mind. It is something a father should never have to suffer," he later wrote.
Police set up a crime scene where Ms Cordingley's body was discovered, at the southern end of the beach, just 800 metres from her car.
It was just the beginning of a years-long criminal investigation into the young woman's brutal death.
A homicide investigation begins
From the get-go, the close-knit community where Ms Cordingley had grown up came together to help search for answers.
Her mother, Vanessa Gardiner, pleaded for anyone with information to come forward.
"You can help our broken family by bringing hope and justice for Toyah's senseless death," she said.
"Life for us will never ever be the same."
Police door-knocked residents around Wangetti, gathering voluntary DNA tests for elimination.
Locals combed the rocky stretch of beach for clues, using metal detectors, drones and cameras. The Ellis Beach Bar and Grill offered a free buffet breakfast for people willing to join the search.
Anyone who had made the Sunday drive up the highway towards Port Douglas was asked to send in dashcam footage to police, while tourists were asked to scour holiday snaps taken from the nearby Rex Lookout.
While police were following multiple lines of investigation and identifying persons of interest, the community rallied around Ms Cordingley's family.
The community rocked by a young woman's death
Ms Cordingley's death on a quiet stretch of beach in broad daylight rocked the Cairns community.
Within days, 700 people marched through the streets in a Reclaim the Night rally against gendered violence, marking a moment's silence in Ms Cordingley's honour.
At Ms Cordingley's funeral, just over a week after her body was found, hundreds of mourners packed into the tiny chapel, where a wooden coffin was adorned with fresh, bright yellow sunflowers.
Her parents, too grief-stricken to speak, had their words read out by the celebrant.
"My love for you is boundless and cannot be surpassed, my brightness, my Toyah," her father Troy wrote.
With police still searching for evidence, grieving community members staged a silent vigil at Wangetti, linking arms along the shoreline and casting flowers out into the ocean.
During their Australian tour, Florida rock band The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus dedicated Ms Cordingley's favourite song to her memory.
On the first anniversary of her death, the community unveiled a memorial in the spot where Ms Cordingley would have stepped onto the beach the day that she died.
At the centre of the stone structure was a plaque with Ms Cordingley's version of a well-known quote: "Be the change you want the world to be."
A year on, Ms Cordingley's name still adorned shop windows, posters strung up on trees, and stickers on car bumpers in nearly every street in Cairns.
The Paws and Claws kennel in Port Douglas, where she had worked for a year, opened a puppy nursery named in her honour, complete with a mural of Ms Cordingley and her furry friend smiling in a sunflower field.
A Facebook page dedicated to Ms Cordingley's memory had more than 12,000 members, and stones bearing her name travelled as far afield as Spain and the Sahara Desert.
Ms Cordingley's stepfather said the reporting about her death was insensitive to the grieving family.
"I'm totally pissed off with how the media has conducted themselves with regards to current information and no regard for our family," Darren Gardiner wrote on social media.
But there was still no arrest over Ms Cordingley's death.
Her loved ones held memorials to remember their daughter, promising to keep fighting for justice.
Four of them passed before they received any major update on her case.
Then in November 2022, the Queensland government made a historic move, offering a record $1 million reward for information leading to an arrest — the largest in the state's history.
"She would be looking down thinking, 'I can't believe they're doing this for me'," her mother said at the time.
"She deserves every bit of it, and I just hope I get that call very soon to say that they found him."
A few weeks later, Vanessa Gardiner received that call — police had arrested the prime suspect in their investigation, in India.
Rajwinder Singh named as prime suspect in alleged murder
Rajwinder Singh, an Innisfail nurse, had been living in Australia with his wife and three children.
"This was one of the most intense, [and] comprehensive across-the-world investigations," Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll said.
Queensland police has told the ABC the $1 million reward has not been issued to date, but will be "fully considered following due diligence at the appropriate time".
Then began a complex process to get Mr Singh to Australia to face the murder charges in court, something the federal government said was a "high priority".
"Australian agencies continue to work closely with Indian authorities to pursue Mr Singh's extradition to Australia, to enable him to face justice," Federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said on November 25.
While he waited for his extradition hearing, Mr Singh was placed in Tihar prison, in New Delhi.
He shared a cell with 90 other inmates, according to his lawyer.
At one stage, Mr Singh asked to be moved to a private barrack in the jail and requested boiled food instead of the spicy dishes that he said were causing him digestive issues.
The extradition case to bring Singh back from India
Before Mr Singh could be brought back to Australia, it would be up to an Indian court to decide whether the Queensland Police case against Mr Singh was strong enough to recommend extradition.
Extradition cases are highly bureaucratic in India, and some have taken years to resolve.
There were fears that the Cordingley family's already harrowing pursuit of justice would be extended as they waited for their day in court.
Other similar cases have dragged on for years, because suspects oppose the extradition, appealing in India's highest courts and delaying any resolution.
A case to extradite Indian man Puneet Puneet for a 2008 hit-and-run death in Victoria has taken almost a decade, and after more than 100 court hearings it still has not been resolved.
But Mr Singh made a game-changing statement to the courts in early January that would speed up the extradition: he wanted to go to Australia to face the murder charge and fight it.
"I want to go back. It is the [Indian] judicial system that has been holding things up," he said.
"I did not kill the woman."
The court decided to recommend the extradition, allowing the Indian government to give final approval.
Last week, Queensland police flew to India to bring Rajwinder Singh back to Australia.
Officers had been tight-lipped about how the extradition would work, with concerns about jeopardising the final, careful plan to get the accused man onto a plane from New Delhi.
On Tuesday, Mr Singh was checked into a Qantas flight at New Delhi airport after being taken through the main entrance, surrounded by several Indian and Australian authorities.
He is expected to face charges after he lands in Australia.
