Family called for help before freezing to death near Manitoba-U.S. border in 2022, smuggler testifies

As a family of four from India struggled through a brutal snowstorm that would eventually take their lives near the Manitoba-U.S. border almost three years ago, they called one of the people who had sent them there to ask for help, the Minnesota trial of two alleged human smugglers heard Tuesday.

But help didn't come. Instead, when they told the man on the phone they couldn't find the driver they were supposed to meet on the other side of the border, court heard he told them to turn around and head back to Canada, rather than continuing into the U.S. with a group of other Indian migrants as they'd planned.

Those details were revealed Tuesday through the testimony of Rajinder Pal Singh, a convicted human smuggler and fraudster with knowledge of the Patel family's case who was called as a witness for the prosecution in the jury trial.

"They said, 'This is too cold,'" Singh testified. "'Our kids cannot stand the cold.'"

The frozen bodies of Jagdish Patel, 39, his wife, Vaishali, 37, their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi, and their three-year-old son, Dharmik, were found in a snow-drifted field just 12 metres from the U.S. border on Jan. 19, 2022.

The temperature that day was –23 C, but the wind chill made it feel like the –35 to –38 range.

Singh's testimony came on the second day of the trial of Harshkumar Patel (no relation to the family) and Steve Shand, who are alleged to have each played a role in the smuggling scheme that led to the family's deaths.

Harshkumar Patel was arrested in Chicago in February 2024. Shand was arrested by U.S. border patrol agents on a highway in Minnesota, just south of the Canadian border near Emerson, Man., with other Indian migrants in the van he was driving around the same time the Patel family's bodies were discovered.

Both have pleaded not guilty to several counts related to human smuggling. Their trial started Monday and is scheduled to take approximately five days in Fergus Falls, Minn., about 80 kilometres southeast of Fargo, N.D. — the closest federal courthouse to where the incident happened.

Singh said the man the family called for help was Fenil Patel, a man already charged by police in the Indian state of Gujarat with culpable homicide and human smuggling for his alleged role in the death of the Patel family.

An investigation earlier this year by CBC's The Fifth Estate found Fenil Patel (also no relation to the Patel family) in a suburb outside Toronto.

RCMP would not say why an accused human smuggler, who Indian police say was one of the last people to see the Patel family alive, was living freely in Canada.

WATCH | The Fifth Estate questions Fenil Patel:

While Singh in court Tuesday admitted his role in smuggling people across the international border from British Columbia, he said he wasn't involved once Fenil Patel allegedly moved the operation to Manitoba just before the Patel family died.