A man accused by police in India of helping smuggle a family of four through Canada just before they froze to death on the Manitoba side of the U.S. border more than three years ago has been arrested.
Fenil Patel was taken into custody “pursuant to an extradition request from the United States of America,” a Canadian Justice Department spokesperson told CBC News in an email Monday.
Spokesperson Katelyn Moores said the department couldn’t disclose further details, “as extradition requests are confidential state-to-state communications.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment on the update. CBC News also reached out to the RCMP on Monday.
Indian police previously alleged Patel was one of two men who helped transport the family to the border during a blinding snowstorm and freezing temperatures in January 2022.
The Patel family — no relation to Fenil Patel — died of hypothermia while attempting to cross illegally into Minnesota, near Emerson, Man. The frozen bodies of 39-year-old Jagdish Patel, his 37-year-old wife, Vaishali, their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi, and three-year-old son, Dharmik, were found just 12 metres from the U.S. border.
In January 2023, charges of culpable homicide and human smuggling were announced against Fenil Patel in the Indian state of Gujarat for his alleged role in the family’s deaths. Indian police alleged Patel and another man ran the Canadian arm of the smuggling network, co-ordinating and controlling the final days of the journey by the Patel family to the border.
In May 2023, Indian authorities said they had started the process to extradite Patel and another man accused in the case.
While Indian media reported Patel has lived or fled to numerous places, including the U.S., Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver, an investigation by CBC’s The Fifth Estate found him living a quiet life in a suburb outside Toronto.
WATCH | The Fifth Estate questions Fenil Patel:
Steven D’Souza, host of The Fifth Estate, questions Fenil Patel over allegations from Indian police that he was one of the smugglers responsible for transporting the Patel family (no relation) to the Canada-U.S. border in January 2022.
Fenil Patel did not respond to a number of attempts to interview him over a year ago. When a crew from The Fifth Estate questioned him in front of his home, he turned and walked inside without any response.
In a previous interview, Chaitanya Mandlik, deputy commissioner of the Gujarat state police, Ahmedabad crime branch, said police there requested the RCMP’s help to find Fenil Patel and arrest him in Canada so he could be returned to India to face charges. But it wasn’t clear at the time if an official request had been made.
A Canadian Justice Department spokesperson previously said they couldn’t confirm or deny any potential extradition request “until made public by the courts,” while RCMP at the time would not comment specifically on Fenil Patel’s case.
Details revealed during smugglers’ trial
Patel’s name came up several times last year during the Minnesota trial of two men later convicted for their roles in the smuggling operation involving the Patel family.
Steve Shand and Harshkumar Patel (also not related to the Patel family) were found guilty by a jury in November 2024 of charges related to bringing unauthorized people into the U.S., transporting them and profiting from it.
A Homeland Security special agent testified that car rental records showed Fenil Patel rented a vehicle in Toronto on Jan. 17, 2022, and drove it to Winnipeg, dropping it off there the next day — the same day the Patel family was taken to the border.
Another witness, convicted human smuggler Rajinder Pal Singh, told the trial that Fenil Patel was a smuggling organizer on the Canadian side of the border. He testified that the Patel family called Fenil Patel for help the night they died, but none came.
Prosecutors argued Harshkumar Patel and Steve Shand were co-conspirators in a scheme to bring Indian migrants into Canada on student visas, for hefty sums of money, before dropping them at the border and telling them to walk across.
Shand was arrested near the border, around the same time the Patel family died, with other Indian nationals in the van he was driving. Harshkumar Patel, who is accused of co-ordinating the smuggling and hiring Shand, was later arrested in Chicago.
Harshkumar Patel was in May sentenced to just over 10 years in prison, while Shand was handed a sentence of six and a half years, to be followed by a period of supervised release. Both men later filed notices of appeals related to their convictions and sentences.
‘Logical’ to start with charges in U.S., lawyer says
Steven Tress, a Toronto lawyer who practises criminal and immigration law, said he thinks it makes sense that someone like Fenil Patel would be extradited to the U.S. to potentially face charges there first instead of on the Canadian side.
That’s in part because the smuggling ring that brought the Patel family to the border involved getting people into the U.S. — and because it’s where two other people, Shand and Harshkumar Patel, have already been convicted.
“So there would have had to have been some discussion between the two countries as to the best way to approach this,” Tress said, adding there’s a “really easy extradition treaty” between Canada and the U.S.
“If the United States weren’t interested in prosecuting him, he would almost definitely be charged here. But if he’s charged here and convicted and he has to serve his sentence here, then that will delay any prosecution into the United States.”
Tress also said that Fenil Patel potentially being charged in the U.S. “doesn’t preclude Canada from charging this person at some point in time in the future.”
“It’s just that it seems more logical to start with the United States,” he said.
An alleged human smuggler living in Brampton, Ont., has been arrested and is awaiting extradition to the U.S. Fenil Patel is wanted in India for allegedly helping transport an Indian family of four to the U.S.-Canada border in 2022, just before they froze to death.
