By Gurmukh Singh, IANS
Toronto : Indo-Canadian drug cartel kingpin Ranjit Singh Cheema faces extradition to the US to stand trial for smuggling.
His decade-long legal battle to stop deportation ended Thursday when the Canadian Supreme Court quashed his plea against a lower court order to extradite him to the US.
A known gangster, Cheema is also said to be involved in some of the nearly 100 gang-related killings of Indo-Canadian youth in the Vancouver area during the past 12 years.
Cheema, who was out on a bail of $4 million, surrendered to the authorities and is likely to be handed over to the American Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) soon.
The DEA argued for his extradition on the grounds that he headed Canadian operations of a drug cartel involved in smuggling narcotics into the US.
The Americans said he was involved in an attempt to smuggle in heroin worth $4 million and 4,000 kg of hashish from Pakistan in 1998. In exchange, a Colombian cartel was to supply Cheema with 800 kg of cocaine possibly to be brought into Canada.
The smuggling operation was unearthed in 1998 when Cheema’s men took delivery of the consignment from a Pakistani named Mohammed Yusuf Khan. Khan was acting as a delivery boy for the supplier who happened to be retired Pakistani Army Major Mohamed Shafiq.
Khan told US authorities that Cheema wanted the consignment to land in Vancouver. But he told him that there were logistical problems in bringing the drugs to Vancouver and that the consignment should come to Los Angeles instead.
On this, Cheema told Khan that he had “contacts in the Colombian drug trafficking organization operating out of the Los Angeles area” who will take the delivery.
In January 1998, Cheema’s three associates paid $500,000 to Khan at a Los Angeles hotel and went to the parking lot take delivery of the consignment – planted by the DEA as fake and real heroin boxes.
As they drove away with the boxes, they were nabbed. The three were jailed for nine years.
Cheema was arrested in Vancouver and a lengthy process began for his extradition to the US.
During the trial, Cheema maintained that Yusuf Khan was acting as an agent of the American DEA.
On extradition to the US, Cheema will face a fresh trial in California.