Two human smugglers, including one from India, have been sentenced to up to 10 years in prison in Minnesota for their role in an international human smuggling operation that resulted in the death of a family of four from Dingucha village of Gujarat. The four, including two children, were frozen to death in January 2022 while attempting to cross the Canadian border into the US.
A Minnesota court on Wednesday sentenced Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, an Indian national, who prosecutors said went by the alias “Dirty Harry”, to 10 years and one month in prison for his role in the conspiracy. Patel will be removed from the US following his sentence.
His co-conspirator, Steve Anthony Shand, 50, of Florida, was also sentenced to six years and six months in prison, followed by two years of supervised release, according to a statement issued by the US Department of Justice. Shand was supposed to pick the family up.
According to evidence presented during the trial, Patel and Shand were part of a large-scale human smuggling operation that brought Indian nationals to Canada on fraudulent student visas and then smuggled them into the US across the northern border.
Patel organised the logistics of smuggling immigrants from Manitoba, Canada, into the US, with other co-conspirators, and Shand picked up the aliens just south of the Canadian border in the United States and drove them to Chicago, reports said.
US District Judge John Tunheim handed down the sentences at the federal courthouse in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, where the two men were tried and convicted on four counts each last November.
Last month, the judge refused to overturn the guilty verdicts, noting, “This was not a close case”.
Trial evidence revealed that the cost to be smuggled from India through Canada into the US was $100,000 (approximately Rs 83 lakh).
Prosecutors said the victims – Jagdish Patel, 39; his wife, Vaishaliben, who was in her mid-30s; their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi; and 3-year-old son, Dharmik—froze to death. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police found their bodies just north of the border between Manitoba and Minnesota on January 19, 2022.
Also Read: Frozen In Snow, Now Justice In Court: US Moves To sentence Smugglers Of Indian Migrants
https://www.vibesofindia.com/frozen-in-snow-now-justice-in-court-us-moves-to-sentence-smugglers-of-indian-migrants/
