Brothers Keepers gangster sentenced to 11 years in prison for drug trafficking
A B.C. Supreme Court judge sentenced a high-ranking Brothers Keepers gangster to 11 years in prison on Friday for heading a drug trafficking operation selling fentanyl, heroin, meth and cocaine across the province.
As Amandeep Kang stood to learn his fate, Justice Paul Riley urged the 31-year-old to contemplate his actions while in jail.
“Reflect on the choices that you've made and your associations and what has brought you to this point in your life,” Riley said.
“If you don't make a decision to take your life in a different direction, likely the best outcome for you is that you'll end up back in jail. And the worst outcome is that you'll end up being another fatal casualty in the organized crime regime.”
Indeed, Kang was shot in the arm on March 26, delaying his sentencing hearing a few days because of an infection of his bullet wound. He limped into court Friday morning about 20 minutes late for the hearing, wearing a grey Air Jordan hoodie and sweat pants.
Kang pleaded guilty in October to trafficking for the benefit of a criminal organization, and conspiracy to traffic an array of controlled substances across the Lower Mainland, on Vancouver Island and in the Interior.
He did not address the court on Friday. His lawyer Vicki Williams said his guilty pleas were a sign he was “accepting responsibility for his actions” and saved the judicial system time and resources.
Both defence and federal prosecutors filed a joint sentencing recommendation for 11 years.
Riley said “joint recommendations are often the product of lengthy discussions between counsel who know the case inside and out.”
“The law says that a sentencing judge is to give deference to a joint submission, and ought not to depart from it unless it would bring the administration of justice into disrepute,” he said.
Riley said Kang was clearly a leader of the group selling substances that are “the worst, most dangerous and addictive illegal drugs that plague our society namely, fentanyl, heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine in substantial amounts.”
He said Kang's group was a “subset” of the Brothers Keepers and that Kang was involved in both “the distribution of large quantities of drugs by couriers to various communities throughout British Columbia” and “the operation dial-a-dope trafficking lines or distribution schemes in various communities on Vancouver Island.”
“These were sophisticated criminal undertakings involving planned and deliberate distribution of illicit drugs clearly for material gain,” Riley said. “This kind of conduct is predatory and exploitative and exacts ... untold misery on the community in terms of drug overdose deaths.”
He noted that even as Kang's underlings were getting arrested, he pushed to keep the operation afloat.
“They were concerned only with — or principally with — how to continue without further detection from the police,” Riley said.
Federal prosecutor Irene Sattarzedah read out a detailed agreed statement of facts that included wiretap conversations and text messages between Kang and others in the gang.
Another gang leader captured in the intercepted conversations was Jaskeert Kalkat, who was shot to death in Burnaby in May 2021 as part of the B.C. gang war. Kang and Kalkat were observed driving around together frequently. At one point they had a 15-year-old recruit with them.
The original charges were laid against Kang and several others in 2021 after a three-year investigation by B.C.'S anti-gang Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit.
Sattarzedah noted that Kang's guilty pleas last fall seemed to have precipitated others in the gang pleading guilty to their related charges with all but one left to be sentenced.
Charges were stayed Friday against Kang 's girlfriend, Tanisha Bhatti, at the end of the proceedings. She hugged Kang and wiped tears from her eyes as sheriffs handcuffed him and led him away.