Human smugglers responsible for Gujarati family’s death at Canada-US border still at large; Dingucha kingpin Fenil Patel flees to US

AHMEDABAD: Even a year after four from Dingucha village of Gandhinagar froze to death while crossing the US-Canada border, the Gujarat police or any other Indian agencies are yet to catch the three key human smugglers of the case — Fenil Patel, Rajinder Pal Singh and Bitta Singh.
Now, it has been learnt that Fenil, a resident of Surat, who was living in Canada since 2007, has fled to the US.
According to an FIR filed with the Ahmedabad city crime branch police, Fenil and Bitta were accused in the death of Jagdish Patel (39), his wife Vaishali Patel (37), and their children Vihangi Patel (11) and son Dharmik Patel (3).
Jagdish and his family members were found frozen to death near the US border on January 19.
The Gujarat home department handed over the investigation to CID (Crime) but no results were yielded. On January 15, the city crime branch arrested two accused — Yogesh Patel from Vastrapur and Bhavesh Patel — from Kalol.
“Yogesh and Bhavesh were working in tandem with Fenil, Bitta and Rajinder Pal. Fenil had also come to the city to finalise the deal in November 2021. Fenil was living in different cities in Canada and after his two aides Yogesh and Bhavesh were caught by the city crime branch, Fenil managed to flee to the US,” said a senior Gujarat police officer monitoring the case.
The city crime branch had also coordinated with the Canadian authorities regarding the case but still, they did not achieve any breakthrough in getting custody or even the location of Fenil or Bitta.
When TOI contacted Fenil over the phone, he refused to talk about the issue.
“I do not know about any such case,” said Fenil.
Sources in the police said that Rajinder Pal, who is in the custody of the US police, is also a suspect in the Dingucha case. The city crime branch cops are yet to get concrete evidence against him.