MEMBER OF NOTORIOUS INDIAN GANG SLAIN IN HAIL OF BULLETS IN RAWAI
Police on Tuesday this week ramped up their hunt for two men who gunned down a known member of a notorious Indian gang at a beachfront resort in Rawai last Friday (Feb 4).
Twenty teams of officers had been deployed in the search for the killers, who police said on Monday were still believed to be in Phuket, or at least still in Thailand.
The men are wanted for shooting dead Jimi Sandhu, known by his nickname “Jimi Slice” for the scar across his right cheek.
Sandhu was a known member of the “United Nations” gang, which operates in Canada. He moved from India to Canada when he was just 7 years old, reported the Vancouver Sun, which broke the news that Jimi Sandhu was the man slain in the attack, citing “several sources”.
However, Sandhu was stripped of his Canadian citizenship and deported in 2016 due to his involvement in criminal activity, the newspaper reported, and which Phuket police later said that Canadian police had confirmed.
Chalong Police were first alerted to Sandhu’s slaying last Saturday morning when a maid arrived to clean his rented villa at The Beach Front Hotel on Wiset Rd, Rawai. The maid found Sandhu’s bullet-riddled body face-up beside his rented red MG car parked outside the villa.
Sandhu had been shot at least 10 times at close range. Officers recovered 14 9mm and seven .38-calibre bullets and bullet casings from the scene.
Inside the villa, which Sandhu rented for B100,000 a month, officers found brand-name handbags worth hundreds of millions of baht and three Apple mobile phones.
Officers also found two forms of ID, neither identifying him as Jimi Sandhu. One form of ID was a Canadian passport, issued in Saskatoon, for Mandeep Singh, 31, born in Chennai, India. The other was a Quebec driver’s licence issued to Amarjit Singh Sindu, 33, registered as living at an address in Montreal.
National police chief Gen Suwat Jangyodsuk arrived in Phuket on Monday to be briefed, and to brief the public, on progress in the case.
After the meeting, senior provincial police figures said the killing likely stemmed from conflicts between rival gangs. Region 8 Police Commander Lt Gen Ampol Buaraporn said Sandhu was wanted by Indian authorities for alleged drug trafficking.
The United Nations gang was known to be involved in the drug trade, human trafficking and other violent crimes. Rival gang members frequently taunt each other online over the demise of their counterparts, police said.
The two suspects were likely to be foreign nationals. They were recorded carrying out the attack on CCTV security footage.
The men are first seen walking into the resort villa area just after 9pm last Friday wearing matching hoodies and face masks.
Sandhu pulled up outside his villa just after 10:30pm. The two men are seen sneaking out from behind...
...some bushes and remaining out of sight behind another parked car as they approached. As Sandhu exited his car and turned around, the two men quickly moved toward him, each with a handgun blazing.
The men are seen continuing to shoot Sandhu at close range while he was on the ground, while they are standing over him.
The men were recorded by CCTV in the area fleeing the scene, including down a dark alley and along the sand on the Rawai beachfront, hiding from plain sight behind buildings.
National police chief Gen Suwat on Monday said police were still investigating the passport Sandhu used to enter the country, which is believed to have been counterfeit.
Gen Suwat defended Thai authorities for not identifying Sandhu as he entered the country.
A person having several passports is not illegal, Gen Suwat said.
However, biometrics should have raised the alarm, identifying Sandhu, he added.
Police are “confident” that Sandhu, or “Singh” (as Gen Suwat continued to call him), had entered the country on Jan 27 was accurate, Gen Suwat said.
Pol Col Kritsana Pattanacharoen, deputy spokesman for the Royal Thai Police, later said officers were working closely with Canadian authorities on the investigation and that Sandhu had entered Thailand on Jan 27 via a private plane.
“He entered Thailand on January 27 and stayed at a first hotel, then moved to a second hotel, where he was killed,” Gen Suwat said.
“It has now been reviewed and no country has ever sent us an arrest warrant for this person. This includes no Red Notices,” Gen Suwat said, not clearly specifying whether he was referring to the Sandhu or the identity of Mandeep Singh. “We are now co-ordinating with the Canadian Police and Indian police in exchanging information. We must follow the evidence to determine whether the passport itself is fake, or whether false information was provided to obtain a genuine passport,” he added.
“If you ask Canada, they say that the passport is genuine, but that false information was presented to obtain a genuine passport. The Thai authorities have no way of knowing. No system in the world can tell,” he said.
Biometric passports would be the only way to truly identify a person, Gen Suwat said.
LIFE OF CRIME
According to the Vancouver Sun, which has reported Sandhu’s activities extensively throughout his criminal career, Sandhu had been a member of the United Nations, a criminal gang active in the Pacific coast province of British Columbia.
Rivals in the Brothers Keepers gang “were posting insults and taunts on social media when the news broke” of Sandhu’s death, the newspaper said.
Sandhu was born in India and moved to Canada as a 7-year-old and grew up with relatives in Abbotsford, near Vancouver. After getting caught up in gang life and convicted of serious assaults in 2010 and 2012, he faced deportation, the Sun said.
He was deported in early 2016 and two years later news emerged that he had been arrested in India and charged with operating a large ketamine factory. After he was released on bail, he disappeared and was believed to have been travelling between Dubai and Southeast Asia ever since, the newspaper said.
At his immigration hearing in 2015, the Sun said, Sandhu acknowledged the risk of gang life: “I know that path is either go to jail or you die,” he said.