Steve Shand sentenced to six and a half years in prison

Steve Shand, 50, the second person convicted of human trafficking in the deaths of an Indian family from Gujarat who froze to death in minus 38 degrees Celsius while trying to enter the US from Canada, has been sentenced to six and a half years in prison. A Minnesota court in the US announced the sentence against Harshkumar Patel and Shand last evening.

Authorities say the two accused were involved in a large-scale human trafficking operation to illegally bring Indians from Canada to the US. In January 2022, the bodies of Jagdish Patel, his wife Vaishaliben and their two children, an 11-year-old girl and a three-year-old boy, were found in Manotiba.

Harshkumar Patel, 29, was the mastermind behind the attempt to smuggle them across the US border and was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a Minnesota court yesterday. The US Justice Department said Patel will be deported after serving his sentence.