Web desk
TORONTO: A Punjabi man in Seattle, who is a suspect in smuggling four members a Gujarati family who froze to death while entering the US from Canada in January 2022, has pleaded guilty to smuggling hundreds of Indians into the US.
Rajinder Pal Singh, 49, who lives illegally in the US and has been investigated by the Canadian police for his role in smuggling the Gujarati family, told a Seattle court this week that he was part of a smuggling ring that brought hundreds of Indians into the US via Canada since 2018.
Singh admitted he made more than $500,000 as a key member of the smuggling ring.
Records filed in the court show the gang charged as much as $11,000 from each smuggled Indian to transport them to their ultimate destinations in the US.
Using the ride share app Uber, Singh and his men would first pick up the smuggled Indians from the border area in the early hours of the morning and bring them to the Seattle area. From there, they were sent to their respective destinations.
“All told, from mid-2018 to May 2022, Singh arranged more than 600 trips involving the transportation of Indian Nationals who had been illegally smuggled into the US,” say the court records.
Singh became a suspect in the smuggling of the Gujarati Patel family after U.S. Homeland Security tapped his conversation in January 2022 discussing recent arrests of illegal migrants entering the US from Canada.
The Patel family of four – Jagdishkumar Patel (39), his wife Vaisahli, daugher Vihangi (11) and son Dharmik (3) – froze to death on the night of January 19, 2022, after entering the US illegally with a group of 11 Gujaratis.
In the conversation, Singh is heard saying, “They (US authorities) know from where these people are f–king coming…So now if we want to do this work, then we have to do it from Winnipeg. I spoke to [name deleted] in Toronto. He has two drivers who can pick up people from that side.”
The Patel family landed in Toronto on January 12, 2022, and travelled to Manitoba on January 16.
The police in Canada has yet to find who transported the family to Winnipeg and where they stayed.
The Gujarat Police have arrested and charged three persons – Bhavesh Patel, Yogesh Patel and Dashrath Chaudhary – with human trafficking.
