A 20-year-old Gujarati youth, Mit Patel, lost his life in a road accident in Brampton, Canada. Patel, who had arrived in Canada on a student visa, was struck by a pick-up truck on Mississauga Road in Williams Parkway, Brampton, early in the morning. Despite being rushed to the hospital with serious injuries, Patel could not be saved.
The incident is currently under investigation by Peel Regional Police’s Major Collision Bureau. The driver of the pick-up truck has provided dashcam footage to aid in the investigation. Patel, an only child, had moved to Canada just seven months ago for his graduation.
Hailing from a small town in Gujarat, Patel had started working in a mall alongside his studies, considering his family’s financial condition. His sudden death has left his middle-class family in Gujarat devastated and unable to afford the repatriation of their son’s body to India.
In response to this tragic event, Gujaratis residing in Canada have launched a crowdfunding campaign on GoFundMe to help Patel’s family and to arrange for the repatriation of his body to India. The campaign, named GoFundami, aims to collect 75 thousand Canadian dollars. So far, around 50 thousand dollars have been raised.
The appeal on GoFundMe, made by a girl named Siddhi Patel, stated that all the collected funds would be transferred to Mit Patel’s parents’ bank account once the fundraising process was over. The campaign organisers, based in Canada, aim to collect one lakh dollars to support Patel’s family.
While there are no exact details on when Patel’s body will reach his home country, it typically takes at least a week to send the body to India following the completion of legal processes, and the cost is substantial.
The incident is one among a string of such deaths of Indian students in Canada and underscores the challenges faced by international students.
A 19-year-old youth belonging to Ahmedabad died in an accident on July 21. The youngster had gone to Barrie in Ontario, for higher education, where he met with an accident. Local police arrested the car driver in the case. Patel died on the spot.
Then too, the body was brought back to India through crowd funding by his friends in Canada.
Two months before that, the body of Ayush Dankhara, 23, a native of Bhavnagar studying in Toronto, was flund below a bridge in Toronto. He had gone missing on May 5 and his body was found two days later.
Ayush, son of Ramesh Dankhara, a DSP with Gujarat Police, was the second student from Gujarat studying at York University in Toronto to have died in suspicious circumstances in less than a month.
The body of Harsh Patel, a student from Ahmedabad, was found on April 16.
Both Ayush and Harsh were about to complete their studies from York University — Ayush his engineering and Harsh management studies.
Both bodies were found from water bodies – in the case of Harsh, it was a lake in the city.
Both went missing for over a day and in both cases, their phones were missing from near their bodies, ruling out the suicide angle.
Back in 2022, Jagdish Patel, 39, his wife, Vaishaliben, 34, their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi and their 3-year-old son Dharmik, all from the village of Dingucha in Gujarat state were frozen to death on the Canadian border in 2022.
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