Minnesota, US:
The United States has convicted two, including an Indian national, of charges related to Human smuggling after an Indian migrant family froze to death while attempting to cross the Canada-US border during a blizzard in 2022. A Minnesota jury found that Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, an Indian national known by the alias “Dirty Harry,” and Florida resident Steve Shand, were part of a sophisticated illegal operation that has brought increasing numbers of Indians into the US, prosecutors said.
Patel (29) and Shand (50) were each convicted on four counts related to human smuggling, including conspiracy to bring migrants into the country illegally. The most serious counts carry maximum sentences of up to 20 years in prison, The Associated Press reported quoting the US Attorney’s Office.
However, the guidelines for federal sentencing in the US rely on complicated formulas. according to Minnesota US Attorney Andy Luger, various factors will be considered to determine what sentences prosecutors will recommend for the convicted.
The Case
The victims—39-year-old Jagdish Patel, his wife Vaishaliben, who was in her mid-30s, their 11-year-old daughter Vihangi, and three-year-old son Dharmik—were found frozen to death near Emerson town of Manitoba province by Canadian authorities on January 19, 2022, while trying to cross the border into Minnesota in a scheme Patel and Shand organized.
The family was originally from Dingucha village in Gujarat’s Gandhinagar district. Patel and his wife were reportedly schoolteachers and their family was fairly well off by local standards. Patels were part of an 11-member group of undocumented Indian migrants who had paid smugglers to navigate their illegal entry into the US.
Verdict
The verdict in the case came on Friday at the end of the five-day federal trial in Minnesota’s Fergus Falls.
Condemning the operation, US Attorney Luger said, “This trial exposed the unthinkable cruelty of human smuggling and of those criminal organizations that value profit and greed over humanity.”
“To earn a few thousand dollars, these traffickers put men, women and children in extraordinary peril leading to the horrific and tragic deaths of an entire family. Because of this unimaginable greed, a father, a mother and two children froze to death in sub-zero temperatures on the Minnesota-Canadian border,” he added.
During the trial, Defence attorneys from both accused were pitted against each other. Shand’s team said that their client was unwittingly roped into Patel’s smuggling scheme, while Patel’s lawyers argued that he had been misidentified.
Patel’s team said that “Dirty Hary,” the alleged nickname for their client found in Shand’s phone, is a different person, according to The Canadian Press.
However, the prosecutors argued that Patel was the coordinator of the smuggling operation while Shand was a driver. They said that Shand was to pick up 11 Indian migrants on the Minnesota side of the border, however, only seven survived the foot crossing.
The Patel family was found by Canadian authorities later that morning, dead from the cold.
During the trial, Yash Patel, a 29-year-old survivor who managed to cross over and reach the van driven by Shand on the fateful day, also testified. He told the court that the group had separated after stepping into the blizzard. The van was later caught by the Border Patrol Police.
The trial also included an inside account of an alleged participant in the smuggling ring. Rajinder Singh, 51, a survivor of the treacherous journey across the northern border, testified that he made over USD 400,000 smuggling over 500 people through the same network that included Patel and Shand.
As per the AP report, Singh said most of the people he smuggled came from Gujarat state. He said the migrants would often pay smugglers about USD 100,000 to get them from India to the US, where they would work to pay off their debts at low-wage jobs in cities around the country. According to Singh, smugglers ran their finances through “hawala,” an informal money transfer system that relies on trust.