Indian police are seeking the extradition of an Indo-Canadian tour operator who allegedly hired a hitman to kill a swimming coach whom he believed had an affair with his wife.
The Greater Noida police identified the suspect as a Canadian businessman of Indian origin, Sukhdev Singh, but did not disclose where in Canada he lived.
The swimming coach received a bullet injury to his face after the contract killer fired at him from a .315 calibre gun in June this year. The victim, however, survived the attack, Indian media reported.
The 35-year-old wife of the accused is the daughter of a retired Indian Foreign Service officer, who now lives in Greenwood Society in Greater Noida. The couple had got married in 1999 and has a son said the Times of India.
According to the Greater Noida police chief, Atul Saxena, Sukhdev Singh is originally from Hoshiarpur in Punjab and is a successful tour operator in Canada.
He had last visited India shortly before the festival of Holi when his wife’s driver, had allegedly told him that his wife was having an affair with the coach. This man was working as a swimming instructor at the YMCA in Greater Noida.
Police said the driver had tried to get close to Sukhdev’s wife but was unsuccessful. His motive, according to the cops: He wanted to grab properties that she owns.
After being incited by the driver, according to the police, Sukhdev allegedly decided to get the swimming coach killed. Then the driver, named Rishipal, introduced him to one Santosh Rajvanshi, who used to drive a private taxi that Rishipal had purchased. Rishipal allegedly told Sukhdev that Rajvanshi would help them in eliminating the coach.
Sukhdev then left for Canada saying he would give his old Maruti van to Rajvanshi if the latter eliminated the coach, police chief Saxena told local media.
Police alleged that last  June when the coach had gone to the woman’s house in his Baleno car to pick her up, Rajvanshi allegedly fired at him from a double-barrel .315 calibre gun as the couple was coming out of her house. The man was rushed to hospital but he survived.
During interrogation, Rishipal broke down and allegedly told police about Rajvanshi and his attempt to murder the coach. The police are now on the lookout for Rajvanshi.
Contract killings involving non-resident Indians have increased in India in recent years.
Indian police and legal experts tell the South Asian Post that the worrying trend is rising because the culprits believe that India cannot extradite them.
In many of the cases, poorly paid Indian policemen play a role in the killings or help cover-up evidence after getting paid in overseas dollars.
In most cases, broken marriages, illicit affairs and property disputes are the main reasons why NRIs are ordering people killed.
The killings are carried out in India and not in the adopted countries of these NRIs because of the lax laws in India.
The money involved in each contract killing, according to police officials, is anything between C$5,000 to C$125,000.
Over the last two years, there have been at least two dozen contract killings involving NRIs in Punjab.
Most of the cases occurred in Punjab’s Doaba belt — the land between the Sutlej and Beas rivers comprising the districts of Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala and Nawanshahr — where most of Canada’s South Asians hail from.
“NRIs sitting abroad think that they can get away with it by getting the crime committed in Punjab through contract killers,” said Jalandhar range deputy inspector general Narinder Pal Singh in an elarlier interview.
“They are wrong.”
In many of the Canadian cases, frustrated Indian police are unable to get their hands on the suspects because of Canada’s complex and snail-paced extradition process.
The most infamous of the Canadian cases involves Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu, a British Columbia beautician who was murdered by contract killers hired by her family after she secretly married a poor man they did not approve of. Indian police have been trying since 2000 to arrest the victim’s mother and uncle, whom they allege were the masterminds.
Here are some of the other contract murder cases involving Canadian NRIs in India:
In November 2005, police allege that Vancouver businessman Bachan Singh Kingra was hacked to death by two hired assassins. The killers were allegedly hired by his oldest daughter, Balwinder Kaur, who was irked by her 64-year-old father’s plan to get a new bride, have a son and give him the family land over her.
In July 2007, Indian police arrested Calgary resident Jagtar Singh Mallhi, 32, who had orchestrated a fake car crash with the help of hired killers to murder his wife. He was allegedly upset that his wife would not consent to his illiterate cousin getting married to her university-educated sister.
In August 2003, Canadian doctor Asha Goel was the victim of a brutal beating death in Mumbai, India. There had been a rift among her siblings over a multi-million-dollar inheritance. Dr. Goel, 62, was chief obstetrician at the Headwaters Health Centre in Orangeville, Ontario.
In January 2008, Indian police alleged that a Surrey family hired a group of contract killers for about C$3,000 to kill Ranphool Singh of Mundiya village after he failed to come up with the promised Rs30 lakh rupees (C$76,000) dowry for his daughter.  Police arrested the contract killers while they were on their way to commit the murder.