The State Monitoring Cell (SMC) apprehended Bobby alias Bharat Patel, the most-wanted person in the illegal immigration scam, in a major success for Gujarat Police. Bobby Patel is thought to have orchestrated the infiltration of the Dingucha family, who died of hypothermia on the Canada-US border.
In the charge-sheet filed in court, the city crime branch named Patel and his alleged accomplice Charanjit Singh, a US passport holder from Delhi as accused in the fake immigration scam. According to Gujarat police, Charanjit Singh fled to the United States a week after the Dingucha tragedy. “He owns motels in the US. His wife lives there. He is well connected with the cartel which arranges infiltration of Indians from Canada to the US,” an investigator said.
According to Gujarat police sources, Gujarat CID was investigating the Dingucha deaths case, in which Jagdish Patel, 35, his wife, Vaishali, 33, and their children Vihanga, 12, and Dharmik, 3, died in freezing temperatures in Canada on January 19.
During the preliminary investigation, it was discovered that Bobby Patel was assisted by Singh in illegally sending the family from Canada to the US.
Since then, CID crime was looking for Patel and Singh. “We came to know that Charanjit Singh had already fled to the US. When we reached Bobby Patel’s flat located near Vaishnodevi on SG Highway, we found that he had gone underground. Notices were then stuck on the flat door. We were shocked when he called us from a phone number registered in Nepal. But through technical investigation we found that he was using a VoIP ( Voice over Internet Protocol) to camouflage the Indian number into a Nepal registered number. He was hiding in India,” said a CID crime official.
Officials told that they will also ask for Bharat Patel’s custody through a transfer warrant from court as he is wanted in other offences of fake passports. “We have also started the extradition process of Charanjit Singh from the US,” said the official.