A man accused by police in India of helping smuggle a family of four through Canada just before they froze to death on the Manitoba side of the U.S. border more than three years ago has been arrested.
Fenil Patel was taken into custody “pursuant to an extradition request from the United States of America,” a Canadian Justice Department spokesperson told CBC News in an email Monday.
Spokesperson Katelyn Moores said the department couldn’t disclose further details, “as extradition requests are confidential state-to-state communications.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment on the update. CBC News also reached out to the RCMP on Monday.
Indian police previously alleged Patel was one of two men who helped transport the family to the border during a blinding snowstorm and freezing temperatures in January 2022.
The Patel family — no relation to Fenil Patel — died of hypothermia while attempting to cross illegally into Minnesota, near Emerson, Man. The frozen bodies of 39-year-old Jagdish Patel, his 37-year-old wife, Vaishali, their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi, and three-year-old son, Dharmik, were found just 12 metres from the U.S. border.
In January 2023, charges of culpable homicide and human smuggling were announced against Fenil Patel in the Indian state of Gujarat for his alleged role in the family’s deaths. Indian police alleged Patel and another man ran the Canadian arm of the smuggling network, co-ordinating and controlling the final days of the journey by the Patel family to the border.
In May 2023, Indian authorities said they had started the process to extradite Patel and another man accused in the case.
While Indian media reported Patel has lived or fled to numerous places, including the U.S., Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver, an investigation by CBC’s The Fifth Estate found him living a quiet life in a suburb outside Toronto.
WATCH | The Fifth Estate questions Fenil Patel:
The Fifth Estate questions Fenil Patel
Fenil Patel did not respond to a number of attempts to interview him over a year ago. When a crew from The Fifth Estate questioned him in front of his home, he turned and walked inside without any response.
In a previous interview, Chaitanya Mandlik, deputy commissioner of the Gujarat state police, Ahmedabad crime branch, said police there requested the RCMP’s help to find Fenil Patel and arrest him in Canada so he could be returned to India to face charges. But it wasn’t clear at the time if an official request had been made.
A Canadian Justice Department spokesperson previously said they couldn’t confirm or deny any potential extradition request “until made public by the courts,” while RCMP at the time would not comment specifically on Fenil Patel’s case.
Patel’s name came up several times last year during the Minnesota trial of two men later convicted for their roles in the smuggling operation involving the Patel family.
Steve Shand and Harshkumar Patel (also not related to the Patel family) were found guilty by a jury in November 2024 of charges related to bringing unauthorized people into the U.S., transporting them and profiting from it.
A Homeland Security special agent testified that car rental records showed Fenil Patel rented a vehicle in Toronto on Jan. 17, 2022, and drove it to Winnipeg, dropping it off there the next day — the same day the Patel family was taken to the border.
Another witness, convicted human smuggler Rajinder Pal Singh, told the trial that Fenil Patel was a smuggling organizer on the Canadian side of the border. He testified that the Patel family called Fenil Patel for help the night they died, but none came.
Prosecutors argued Harshkumar Patel and Steve Shand were co-conspirators in a scheme to bring Indian migrants into Canada on student visas, for hefty sums of money, before dropping them at the border and telling them to walk across.
Shand was arrested near the border, around the same time the Patel family died, with other Indian nationals in the van he was driving. Harshkumar Patel, who is accused of co-ordinating the smuggling and hiring Shand, was later arrested in Chicago.
Harshkumar Patel was in May sentenced to just over 10 years in prison, while Shand was handed a sentence of six and a half years, to be followed by a period of supervised release. Both men later filed notices of appeals related to their convictions and sentences.
