 "Trial begins of US men who smuggled Indian family that froze to death. What is the case?")
An Indian family froze to death in 2022 while attempting to cross the Canadian border into America.
Now, the trial of the two men that allegedly smuggled them has begun in America.
Jagdish Patel, his wife Vaishaliben and two young children Dharmik and Vihangi were among 11 immigrants waiting to make the crossing into America in January 2022.
Authorities found the family’s bodies in a field in a frozen field in Canada.
Prosecutors have arrested two men – Harshkumar Patel and Steve Shand – in the case.
But what happened? And what do we know about the case?
Let’s take a closer look:
What happened?
Jagdish Patel, 39, grew up in Gujarat’s Dingucha.
He and his wife, Vaishaliben, who was in her mid-30s, lived with his parents, raising their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi, and Dharmik.
The couple were schoolteachers, according to local news reports.
The family was fairly well off by local standards, living in a well-kept, two-story house with a front patio and a wide veranda.
“It wasn’t a lavish life,” said Vaibhav Jha, a local reporter who spent days in the village. “But there was no urgent need, no desperation.”
But the narrow streets of Dingucha, a quiet village near Gandhinagar, are paved with ads to move overseas.
“Make your dream of going abroad come true,” one poster says, listing three tantalising destinations: “Canada. Australia. USA.”
Impact Shorts
More ShortsExperts say illegal immigration from India is driven by everything from political repression to a dysfunctional American immigration system that can take years, if not decades, to navigate legally.
But much is rooted in economics, and how even low-wage jobs in the West can ignite hopes for a better life.
Those hopes have changed Dingucha.
Today, so many villagers have gone overseas — legally and otherwise — that blocks of homes stand vacant and the social media feeds of those who remain are filled with old neighbours showing off houses and cars.
That drives even more people to leave.
“There was so much pressure in the village, where people grew up aspiring to the good life,” Jha said.
“Every child here grows with the dream of moving to a foreign country,” a Dingucha councilman told the BBC.
Smuggling networks were glad to help, charging fees that could reach $90,000 per person. In Dingucha, Jha said, many families afforded that by selling farmland.
Satveer Chaudhary is a Minneapolis-based immigration attorney who has helped migrants exploited by motel owners, many of them Gujaratis.
Smugglers with ties to the Gujarati business community have built an underground network, he said, bringing in workers willing to do low- or even no-wage jobs.
“Their own community has taken advantage of them,” Chaudhary said.
The pipeline of illegal immigration from India has long existed but has increased sharply along the US-Canada border . The US Border Patrol arrested more than 14,000 Indians on the Canadian border in the year ending September 30, which amounted to 60 per cent of all arrests along that border and more than 10 times the number two years ago.
By 2022, the Pew Research Center estimates there were more than 725,000 Indians living illegally in the US, behind only Mexicans and El Salvadorans.
According to BBC, the Patels had arrived in Canada on tourist visas.
It was into this pipeline that the Patels went – with tragic results.
Enter ‘Dirty Harry’
Coordinating things in Canada , federal prosecutors say, was Harshkumar Patel, an experienced smuggler nicknamed “Dirty Harry.”
As per CBC.CA, Harshkumar goes by a number of other aliases including Harry Patel, Param Singh, Haresh Patel, and Hareshkumar Singh Patel.
As per BBC, Harshkumar manages a Casino in Florida.
On the US side was Steve Shand, the driver recently recruited by Harshkumar at a casino near their Florida homes, prosecutors say.
As per India Today, the men knew each other because they both live in Florida and frequent the same casino game rooms.
The two men are accused of being part of a sophisticated human smuggling operation feeding a fast-growing population of Indians living illegally in the US.
As per BBC, another related investigation has revealed that the Indians would be sent to work in a Chicago restaurant chain.
They would remain here until they ‘paid off their debt’ to the smugglers.
Harshkumar was arrested in February 2024 in Chicago, according to CBC.CA.
Both men have pleaded not guilty.
Over the five weeks the two worked together, documents filed by prosecutors allege they spoke often about the bitter cold as they smuggled five groups of Indians over that quiet stretch of border.
“16 degrees cold as hell,” Shand messaged during an earlier trip. “They going to be alive when they get here?”
By 3 am on January 19, 2022, the 11 Indian migrants had spent hours wandering in gusting snow and brutal cold trying to find Shand.
Many were in jeans and rubber work boots. None wore serious winter clothing.
This group included Patel his wife and their two young children.
Wind chills reached minus 36 Fahrenheit (minus 38 Celsius) that night in January 2022 as the family from India set out on foot to meet a waiting van.
They walked amid vast farm fields and bulky snowdrifts, navigating in the black of an almost-moonless night.
The driver, waiting in northern Minnesota, messaged his boss: “Make sure everyone is dressed for the blizzard conditions, please.”
Shand, though, was stuck.
Prosecutors allege he had been heading to the pickup spot in a rented 15-passenger van when he drove into a ditch roughly 0.8 kilometers from the border.
Eventually, two migrants stumbled across the van. Sometime later, a passing pipeline company worker pulled the vehicle from the ditch.
Soon after that, a US Border Patrol agent, on watch for migrants after boot prints were found near the border, pulled over Shand.
Shand repeatedly insisted there was no one else outside, even as five more desperate Indians wandered to the vehicle from the fields, including one going in and out of consciousness.
They had been walking for more than 11 hours.
There were no children among the migrants, but one man had a backpack filled with toys, children’s clothes and diapers.
But there were no children.
Patel and his family had somehow gotten separated from the others the authorities were told, as per BBC.
Hours later, their bodies were discovered by authorities in a snowbank in Manitoba on January 19, 2022, as per CBC.CA.
They were just 12 metres away from the US border.
In Patel’s frozen arms was the body of his 3-year-old son, Dharmik, wrapped in a blanket.
Daughter Vihangi was nearby, while Vaishaliben was a short walk away.
“What I am about to share is going to be difficult for many people to hear,” assistant commissioner Jane MacLatchy with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police told reporters the next day as per BBC.
“It is an absolute and heartbreaking tragedy.”
Back in India, investigating officer Dilip Thakor said media attention had led to the arrest of three men in the Patel case, but hundreds of such cases don’t even reach the courts.
With so many Indians trying to get to the US, the smuggling networks see no need to warn off customers.
They “tell people that it’s very easy to cross into the US They never tell them of the dangers involved,” Thakor said.
US prosecutors allege Harshkumar and Shand were part of a sprawling operation, with people to scout for business in India, acquire Canadian student visas, arrange transportation and smuggle migrants into the US, mostly via Washington state or Minnesota.
Harshkumar, 29, and Shand, 50, each face four counts related to human smuggling at the federal courthouse in Fergus Falls, Minnesota.
Jury selection in the case began today, as per CBC.CA.
A man who was part of the smuggling ring may be called to testify, prosecutors say.
The migrants who made the crossing may also be summoned to the witness box.
According to BBC, one of them, known only as VD, said he paid $87,000 to get into Canada under a student visa.
He was later helped to enter the US illegally.
Patel’s attorney, Thomas Leinenweber, has said his client came to America to escape poverty and build a better life and “now stands unjustly accused of participating in this horrible crime.”
Shand’s attorney’s did not return calls seeking comment.
Prosecutors say Shand told investigators that Patel paid him about $25,000 for the five trips.
His final passengers, though, never made it.
No charges have been filed in Canada, as per India Today.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police says the investigation is open.
Hemant Shah, an Indian-born businessman living in Winnipeg, some 110 kilometers north of where the migrants were found, helped organise a virtual prayer service for the Patels.
He’s accustomed to hard winters and can’t fathom the suffering they endured.
“How could these people have even thought about going and crossing the border?” Shah said.
Greed, he said, had taken four lives: “There was no humanity.”
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