As US court rules on family’s border death, a cagey silence shrouds a village in Gujarat

Today, the village is back in the spotlight, with a US court holding two men — Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, 29, alias “Dirty Harry” from Gujarat, and Florida resident Steve Shand, 50 — guilty on November 22 of “a conspiracy to bring aliens to the US” and putting their lives in jeopardy, among other charges.

Dingucha village is accessible only by a single-lane dirt track. (Express Photo by Brendan Dabhi)

“We don’t know anything about this case in the US,” says Baldev Patel, the father of Jagdish Patel, 39, who, along with his wife Vaishaliben, daughter Vihangi, 11, and son Dharmik, 3, froze to death in Canada’s Manitoba on January 19, 2022.

Baldev, who was unavailable when The Indian Express visited the village on November 21, spoke over the phone from an undisclosed location. A 20-year-old man in the village explained Baldev’s reluctance to talk. “The family wants to be left alone. It has taken them a long time to move on from the deaths, but they keep coming back to haunt them every time there is news regarding illegal immigration to the US. The family just wants to move on,” says the man.

There could be another, more telling, reason why the family — and the village itself — is cagey, say other residents, who did not wish to be identified. One of them, a man in his mid-20s, says, “Recently, about 15 people (from the village) reached the US. We don’t get to know when people leave the village. We only get the news when they call after reaching the US.”

Local officials cannot confirm this claim but say the “unnecessary attention” has irked residents, who “feel it could thwart future immigration plans”. “This has been the attitude ever since Dingucha came under the spotlight after the death of the Patel family. Some believe this exposure has ruined the chances of others who want to make their way to the land of opportunities,” says an official.

The bodies of Jagdish’s family were discovered by the Canadian authorities on January 19, 2022. While the bodies of Jagdish, his daughter Vihangi, 11, and son Dharmik, 3, were found together — with the father’s hand frozen around his son, who was wrapped in a blanket with “ducks and stars” — his wife Vaishali was found “slumped over the fence”, nearly 1.6 km away and just 12 metres from where the family was supposed to cross over to the US. Forensic experts who testified in the US court said the family was “not dressed to withstand the blizzard”.

The family was reportedly among the 11 undocumented migrants from India seeking to enter the US illegally in an operation coordinated by Harsh Patel. Harsh Patel’s accomplice Shand was tasked with picking up the 11 Indian migrants on the Minnesota (US) side of the border.

As reported by The Indian Express, Yash Patel, a 29-year-old from the group of 11 that managed to cross over to the US, told the jury how local agents in Canada, including two Indian nationals in Harsh Patel’s network, had arranged a van to transport the migrants from a residential apartment in Canada’s Winnipeg to Manitoba near the border, from where they would cross over to the US and meet Shand, the driver of “a white van”. However, as a blizzard intensified, the van taking them to Manitoba got stuck in the snow and the driver asked the migrants to cover the rest of the distance on foot “in a straight line” until they found Shand’s van at the US border, a court official in Minnesota told The Indian Express.

The official said, “The agents had, perhaps, underestimated the danger of a blizzard or did not care that some of them could freeze unto the bone.”

Over two years after the deaths of Jagdish Patel and his family and days after the hearing in the Minnesota court, in Dingucha, villagers say these reports have done nothing to slow the craze to leave for the US.

The village, incidentally, does not have a sarpanch and is administered directly by the local revenue official who holds the title of “Talati cum Mantri”. Jayesh Chaudhary, the talati in charge of Dingucha, says that even now, long after those deaths on the border, “USA remains a trigger word for villagers”.

The victims—Jagdish Patel, 39, his wife Vaishaliben, in her mid-30s, their 11-year-old daughter Vihangi, and three-year-old son Dharmik—were found dead near Emerson town of Manitoba province.

“Just like many people come to Gujarat from UP and Bihar and other states to work, these people go to work in the US because there is nothing here for them,” says another local resident.

A college student says people continue to take risks to go to the US. “If you are caught at the border and your case is underway, people can still stay there. If you marry a citizen there, the process is faster, of course. Basically, if you don’t commit a crime, they usually let you stay in the US, but if you do, you are sent back. One man was deported to India and came back to the village about a year and a half ago.”

In Dingucha, the locked houses have presented a crisis of a different kind for the local administration. Officials say many households have tax dues piled up.

“Many non-resident villagers ask their relatives or neighbours to pay their taxes, some owners visit the village after several years and pay all of it together. But for many property owners, we don’t have any forwarding address at all. We don’t even know if they are in India or abroad,” says Chaudhary, the talati.

The kuccha road out of Dingucha village. (Express Photo by Brendan Dabhi)

After the Dingucha family’s death, the police went on the trail of ‘agents’ behind the racket. According to Gujarat police, Fenil Patel, who hails from Surat and is said to be the mastermind of the illegal immigration route to the US, is believed to be in Canada with a Red Corner Notice issued against him. Another accused, Bitta Singh alias Bittu Paaji, is also on the wanted list.

Three other accused were arrested by the Detection of Crime Branch (DCB) of Ahmedabad City Police in January 2023, including Yogesh Patel of Ahmedabad, Bhavesh Patel of Gandhinagar and Dashrath Chaudhary from Mehsana. “All three had been accused on the basis of evidence as well as statements from the seven students who had survived the border crossing in which Jagdish and his family perished,” says a former investigator of this case.

Another key accused in facilitating illegal immigration, Bharat aka Bobby Patel, was arrested by the State Monitoring Cell (SMC) of Gujarat Police and is currently in judicial custody after the Supreme Court rejected his bail plea.

Bobby Patel had earlier been accused by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) of “having caused death of four persons of a family from Dingucha in Gujarat, on January 19, 2022, who were among 11 Indians sent illegally to USA from Canada and who died due to extreme cold weather conditions while illegally crossing the border from Canada into the USA”.