Smugglers jailed for deaths of Indian family in US-Canada border blizzard

Two men have been sentenced for their role in the deaths of a family from India who froze during a blizzard while trying to cross into the US from Canada.

Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel and Steve Anthony Shand were convicted last November of human trafficking, criminal conspiracy and culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

In court in the US state of Minnesota, Patel was sentenced to just over 10 years in prison. Shand was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison. The custodial terms were nearly half of what prosecutors had sought.

The bodies of Jagdish Patel, 39, his wife Vaishaliben, 37, and their two children, 11-year-old Vihangi and three-year-old Dharmik, were found in January 2022.

Authorities said the couple, both schoolteachers, and their children were trying to cross into the US when they were caught in a blizzard, with temperatures as low as -38C (-36F).

The family had travelled from their home village in the western Indian state of Gujarat to Toronto.

Prosecutors said the Patels became separated from a larger group of people being smuggled.

The family was found in a field in the province of Manitoba by Canadian authorities, just 12m (39ft) from the US border.

Investigators said the group had been walking for hours in the freezing cold and were discovered after Shand was stopped by police on the US side of the border.

Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, an Indian national, was not related to the family.

Prosecutors said he was a well-known human trafficker known as "Dirty Harry" and organised a large-scale operation that brought other Indian nationals to Canada on student visas, then smuggled them south.

Shand, a US citizen from Florida, was set to pick up the migrants after they crossed the border before driving them to Chicago.

At the trial in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, US prosecutor Michael McBride argued that while members of the Patel family were "slowly dying in the freezing cold, Steve Shand sat in his warm van" on the Minnesota side.

"Harshkumar Patel texted from sunny Florida and did nothing to help," Mr McBride said.

"For weeks, they knew the cold would kill, but they decided their profit was more important than these human lives," he told the court.

The trial exposed the workings of an illegal network funnelling migrants into the United States through Canada.

Among the witnesses was Rajinder Pal Singh, a convicted human smuggler who helped move people across the border between British Columbia, Canada's westernmost province, and the north-western US state of Washington.

Acting US Attorney Lisa Kirkpatrick said in a statement after the sentencing: "Every time I think about this case I think about this family - including two beautiful little children - who the defendants left to freeze to death in a blizzard.

"As we've seen time and time again, human traffickers care nothing for humanity."

In 2022, neighbours from the Patels' home village told the BBC that it was common for families in the area to attempt to move to North America in pursuit of better economic opportunities.