- Jashandeep Singh denies knowing his friend Arsh Dalla was in a criminal gang
- Dalla, a Khalistani terrorist, has links to the dreaded Lawrence Bishnoi gang
- Canadian authorities plan to deport Singh over his links to a shooting incident
An Indian man linked to extortion and shooting cases in Canada has claimed that he had no idea that his friend, Khalistani terrorist Arshdeep Singh Gill, was part of a criminal gang.
Gill, alias Arsh Dalla, the de facto chief of the banned Khalistan Tiger Force, is linked to the dreaded Lawrence Bishnoi gang and was a wanted criminal in India.
Canadian immigration authorities now plan to deport his friend, Jashandeep Singh, over his links to Dalla and a shooting incident last August.
Pleading innocence, Singh has claimed he was not part of the gang and that he had no idea that Dalla was a criminal. His only mistake, he said, was that he never asked Dalla why he had a gun, probably because he believed that it was a toy gun.
"It was my bad. Why didn't I ask them at that point in time? At that point, I didn't know that if I held the gun, they would connect me with extortion," he testified through a Punjabi interpreter.
He pleaded that he came to Canada as a student four years ago and is now waiting for his post-graduate work permit.
Singh lives with his sister and brother-in-law in Canada. He said his parents had sent him abroad so he could build a good future, but he now feels ashamed to look into their eyes.
He claimed Dalla was his friend from college. Both men apparently worked together in an Amazon warehouse before Dalla ended up in Calgary while Singh remained in Edmonton.
At the hearing, Singh admitted that he had travelled with Dalla in a car to the spot where he had fired into the air multiple times.
Elaborating on it, he said he received a call from Dalla the night before the shooting. Dalla, he claimed, requested him to let him stay over at his Edmonton home since it was his birthday the next day.
After Dalla arrived at his home, he took out a gun from his bag and started showing it to everyone. Singh claimed that he was not aware whether it was a licensed or illegal firearm.
"When I picked it up, I was just holding it, and another friend of mine who was living in the house with me, I started kidding with him. I just jokingly put it on his head as we were watching films," he added.
Singh claimed that had Dalla told him where he got the gun, he would not have held him and asked him to leave his house.
Dalla was arrested after the August incident.
A previous testimony had suggested that Singh had given the gun away to another friend to get rid of it.
During the deportation hearing, Canadian police also informed that the Bishnoi gang had sent over a letter last year claiming that over a thousand shooters were ready to carry out firings across the country to extort from the South Asian expatriates.
"This specific letter outlined essentially their criminal organisation, where they talked about having upwards of 1,000 individuals who are willing to carry out these shootings as a part of the group," Edmonton Police Service Constable Kevin St Louis was quoted as saying by Global News.
Dalla is allegedly a part of an international criminal syndicate run by Bishnoi from behind bars in India. To extort money, it often uses Indian-origin criminals living in Canada to conduct shootings.
