Lengthy drug trial collapses, accused goes free

Crown advises judge after five weeks it was staying charges, no reason given

More than four years after being charged in connection with a massive cross-border drug conspiracy involving alleged large quantities of cocaine, opium and marijuana, a Windsor man walked out of court Tuesday a free man after the collapse of the prosecution’s case.

Five weeks into a trial begun in March and with no clear end in sight, federal prosecutor Paul Bailey on Tuesday advised Superior Court Justice Christopher Bondy that the Crown was staying the charges against Ram Shura. There were no reasons cited.

“He was just thrilled about it, obviously,” defence lawyer Robert Dipietro said of Shura’s reaction to the trial’s sudden end.

Bailey had only been brought in last week to lead the prosecution after Richard Pollock, Windsor’s chief federal prosecutor, withdrew when the defence advised the judge it wanted to put Pollock on the witness stand.

In mid-trial, Pollock disclosed to the court that, during the police investigation, he had met one-onone in private in Michigan with a convicted drug trafficker who would become the Crown’s main witness in its drug conspiracy case against three Windsor men. The defence wanted to question Pollock about his meeting with Karandeep Dadalia, which would have precluded him from continuing as prosecutor in the same case.

Even before Pollock left the case, however, the Crown withdrew its charges two weeks ago against Shura’s co-accused, Saroop Pahal and Gurjit Kooner.

As part of a multi-year, multi-agency cross-border investigation begun in 2003 into alleged large shipments of marijuana from Canada into the United States and cocaine from the U.S. into Canada through Windsor, Dadalia was nabbed in 2013 attempting to deliver a 266-pound marijuana shipment to an undercover U.S. Homeland Security officer.

Not wanting to compromise an ongoing investigation, Dipietro said Dadalia, also of Windsor, was offered a greatly reduced sentence in return for co-operating with investigators.

“That guy was singing like Johnny Cash,” Dipietro said of Dadalia, who fingered Shura, Pahal and Kooner as co-conspirators.

In return, the Crown’s witness was sentenced in an American court to just over three months in jail and was permitted to remain in the U.S. to live and work. And

he agreed to co-operate with the Ontario Provincial Police and investigators in Canada, in return for not being charged on this side of the border.

But Dadalia, aside from being labelled an unsavoury witness even by the Crown, was found to have “perjured himself a number of times,” said Dipietro. For example, the prosecution’s main witness had told OPP in September 2014 that he had made a 10-kilogram cocaine delivery, something Dipietro said he made no mention of just two weeks later before a grand jury in the U.S.

Dadalia also told that grand jury that he was paid US$15,000 for a 300-pound delivery of marijuana, although in his earlier meeting with the OPP he claimed not to have known how large the shipment had been, according to Dipietro.

Faced with a number of contradictions in the evidence its main witness was likely to provide in the Windsor trial, Dipietro said “the Crown had to reassess the reasonable prospect for conviction.”

Shura, a trucker who was accompanied by his wife and family members during Tuesday’s brief court appearance, had been living the past four years under conditions of a bail release, including not being able to leave the country and having to make weekly and then monthly appearances at his local police station.

Entangled in the same drug conspiracy case is a fourth Windsor man, Gurfathe (Laddi) Kooner, who has been a wanted man since skipping his bail pending an appeal case for a 2013 conviction on firearms offences for which he was sentenced in Windsor to three years in prison.

Despite being on the lam, Dipietro said it would be “mind-boggling” if the Crown ever chose to pursue Kooner in the same case from which the other three men were allowed to walk.

Messages from the Star to Bailey Tuesday requesting comment were not returned.

He was just thrilled about it, obviously.