Gandhinagar: Harshkumar Ramlal Patel, a resident of Dingucha village in Gujarat, has been sentenced to 10 years in a U.S. federal prison for his role as the alleged mastermind of a human smuggling operation that resulted in the tragic deaths of a family of four from his own village. The sentencing comes three years after the family perished while attempting to illegally cross into the U.S. from Canada during a deadly winter storm.
The victims, Jagdish Patel, 39; his wife Vaishaliben, in her mid-30s; their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi; and 3-year-old son, Dharmik, died of exposure after getting lost in a blizzard on January 19, 2022. Their frozen bodies were discovered just north of the Manitoba-Minnesota border by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The family had hoped to reunite with others who had crossed into the U.S. as part of a larger smuggling network.
Patel, reportedly operating under the alias “Dirty Harry,” was convicted in November 2024 on four felony counts alongside his co-accused, Steve Anthony Shand, a U.S. citizen from Florida who was supposed to pick the family up at the border. Both were tried and sentenced at a federal courthouse in Minnesota.
Prosecutors had pushed for harsher penalties, nearly 20 years for Patel and over 10 years for Shand, arguing that the two were key players in a well-organized smuggling ring that exploited Indian nationals by bringing them into Canada and attempting to sneak them into the U.S. under life-threatening conditions. U.S. District Judge John Tunheim, who presided over the trial, rejected any attempt to overturn the convictions, stating plainly in his ruling that “this was not a close case.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin McBride said Patel displayed no remorse and continued to deny his identity as “Dirty Harry,” despite overwhelming evidence and testimony from Shand’s legal team identifying him as such. McBride described the operation as callous and profit-driven, referencing a chilling text from Shand to Patel during the fatal night that read, “we not losing any money.”
Shand, arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Protection while waiting in a mostly empty 15-passenger van, initially denied that others were out in the snow, even as the family struggled in the storm just miles away. The heartbreaking deaths of the Patel family brought international attention to the dangerous routes and tactics used by human trafficking networks, especially those targeting desperate individuals from rural parts of India.