(28 May 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Dingucha, India – 28 May 2025
1. Various of signs for Dingucha village
2. Various of gateway on road
3. Mid of tractor driving on road
4. SOUNDBITE (Gujarati) Baldev Patel, father of victim Jagdish Patel:
“We don’t know Harsh Patel (Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel) or any American, nor are we in contact with anyone. We haven’t received any calls from them so we don’t agree to say anything about them. Whether these people are innocent or guilty, we can’t say anything because we don’t have any proof.”
5. Various of village
6. SOUNDBITE (Gujarati) Baldev Patel, father of victim Jagdish Patel:
“In the sentencing, we have no evidence to say that they are guilty. We have no evidence or record that these persons are guilty. The court does what it sees as right.”
7. Wide of people sitting under tree
8. Mid of temple
STORYLINE:
The father of a man who froze to death along with his wife and two children trying to cross into the United States said on Wednesday he trusts a court to do "what it sees as right" as two men face sentencing in Minnesota over their alleged roles in the incident.
Jagdish Patel, 39; his wife, Vaishaliben, who was in her mid-30s; their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi; and 3-year-old son, Dharmik, froze to death during a blizzard along a remote stretch of the Canadian border in 2022.
Two men face sentencing in Minnesota on Wednesday on human smuggling charges for their roles in what prosecutors call an international conspiracy.
Federal prosecutors have recommended nearly 20 years in prison for the alleged ringleader, Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, and nearly 11 years for the driver who was supposed to pick the family up, Steve Anthony Shand.
“We don’t know Harsh Patel (Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel) or any American, nor are we in contact with anyone. We haven’t received any calls from them so we don’t agree to say anything about them," said Baldev Patel, father of victim Jagdish Patel.
"In the sentencing, we have no evidence to say that they are guilty. We have no evidence or record that these persons are guilty. The court does what it sees as right,” he added.
The prison terms are up to U.S. District Judge John Tunheim, who declined last month to set aside the guilty verdicts, writing, “This was not a close case.”
Tunheim will hand down the sentences at the federal courthouse in the northwestern Minnesota city of Fergus Falls, where the two men were tried and convicted on four counts apiece last November.
Prosecutors said during the trial that Patel, an Indian national who they say went by the alias “Dirty Harry,” and Shand, a U.S. citizen from Florida, were part of a sophisticated illegal operation that brought dozens of people from India to Canada on student visas and then smuggled them across the U.S. border.
They said the victims froze to death and were found by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police just north of the border between Manitoba and Minnesota on January 19, 2022.
The family was from Dingucha, a village in the western Indian state of Gujarat, as was Harshkumar Patel.
Patel is a common Indian surname, and the victims were not related to the defendant.
The couple were schoolteachers, local news reports said.
So many villagers have gone overseas in hopes of better lives — legally and otherwise — that many homes there stand vacant.
Prosecutors asked for a sentence of 19 years and 7 months for Patel, at the top end of the recommended range under federal sentencing guidelines for his actions.
But they did request a government-paid attorney for his planned appeal.
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