Indian ‘Dirty Harry’ gets 10 years in jail after Gujarati family freezes to death on US-Canada border

A "ringleader" of an international human smuggling plot was reportedly sentenced to 10 years in prison in Minnesota on Wednesday. 

The verdict came more than three years after a family of four from India froze to death while trying to enter the US along a remote stretch of the Canadian border in a blizzard.

The judge handed down the sentences at the federal courthouse in the northwestern Minnesota city of Fergus Falls, where the two accused men were tried and convicted on four counts apiece last November.

In court in the US state of Minnesota, Patel was sentenced to just over 10 years in prison. Shand was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison. The custodial terms were about half of what prosecutors had sought.

They were convicted last November of human trafficking, criminal conspiracy and culpable homicide not amounting to murder, BBC reported.

According to the Associated Press, Prosecutors said Patel is an Indian national who went by the alias “Dirty Harry,” and Shand is a US citizen from Florida. Shand was also to be sentenced Wednesday.

They allegedly 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 US border.

As per the report, federal prosecutors had recommended nearly 20 years for Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, and nearly 11 years for the driver who was supposed to pick them up, Steve Anthony Shand.

Patel has been jailed since his arrest at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago in February 2024 and claimed in the filing to have no income and no assets.

“Mr. Patel has never shown an ounce of remorse. Even today, he continues to deny he is the Dirty Harry' that worked with Mr. Shand on this smuggling venture — despite substantial evidence to the contrary and counsel for his co-defendant identifying him as such at trial,” prosecutor Michael McBride wrote.

Meanwhile, Shand has been free pending sentencing. His attorney called the government's requested sentence “unduly punitive” and requested just 27 months. The attorney argued that Shand's role was limited — that he was just a taxi driver who needed money to support his wife and six children.

The family was from Dingucha, a village in Gujarat, as was Harshkumar Patel. Patel is a common Indian surname, and the victims were not related to the defendant.

The father died while trying to shield Dharmik's face from a “blistering wind” with a frozen glove, prosecutor Michael McBride wrote.

Vihangi was wearing “ill-fitting boots and gloves.” Their mother “died slumped against a chain-link fence she must have thought salvation lay behind,” McBride wrote, as per AP report.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police found their bodies just north of the border between Manitoba and Minnesota on January 19, 2022