Few who stopped by Scarborough’s Penny Gas Bar in the early 1990s could have imagined the back story of the man working the lonely overnight shift. Back home in India’s Punjab province, Surinder Singh Parmar had earned a PhD in history, he was the headmaster at a school and he had a family — a wife, a 12-year-old daughter, and a 6-year-old son.

But the 38-year-old had left it all, hopped a plane and in June, 1990, embarked on an experiment of sorts: he’d spend seven months living and working in Canada, testing out the place before deciding if he would bring over his family to start a new life.

Parmar’s wife and kids did indeed uproot and follow him to Canada, but under drastically different circumstances: They settled in Ontario after flying in for his funeral.

On Nov. 19, 1990, at the beginning of his shift at the 24-hour gas bar on Danforth Rd. — where he was hired just a few weeks earlier — Parmar was brutally attacked with a knife inside the station’s men’s bathroom during a vicious robbery of a small amount of cash.

Toronto detectives and police dogs swarmed the scene and collected evidence, but their leads went nowhere. The evidence was boxed up and after three years, the death became a cold case. For Parmar’s widow and kids, there were no answers for more than two decades.

Then, just short of the 25th anniversary of Parmar’s murder, a break: On Monday, Toronto police officers arrested Rupert Richards, 61, at his west-end Toronto home and charged him with first-degree murder in Parmar’s death.

“I think he was quite surprised to see us,” Det.-Sgt. Stacy Gallant said at a news conference Tuesday.

Investigators are revealing few details about the developments, but they say movement on the case came not because of fresh evidence but a careful re-examination of crime-scene DNA and fingerprints, using state-of-the art technology.

“New tests on old evidence,” Gallant said, adding the re-investigation of Parmar’s murder began just three months ago. “This is evidence that had been sitting in boxes on a shelf for years, just waiting for its turn.”

The arrest is the first breakthrough from Toronto Police’s Project Never Give Up, a new initiative born of a recent internal review to improve the force’s investigation of unsolved homicides. The project encourages officers to use forensic technologies on old samples, such as DNA and fingerprints, said Staff Insp. Greg McLane.

“There are going to be other cases that have these golden nuggets in them that we’re going to look for, and we’ll mine them out,” he said. “We’re very optimistic.”

Richards appeared in court Monday and is scheduled back in court next week. Currently unemployed, he is known to police and is facing other unrelated charges including failing to provide a breath sample and possession of an illegal substance.

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Gallant said Parmar’s family members were in “a state of disbelief” when police contacted them Monday about the arrest in the case.

“They were shocked,” said Gallant. “To go 25 years without knowing who did this to their father has been very difficult for them.”

With files from Evelyn Kwong and Alyshah Hasham