POLICE PROBE MURDERED DRUG SMUGGLERS' TIES TO ORGANIZED CRIME

Pair Linked To Lawyer Who Was Jailed For Tampering With A Witness In
A U.S. Drug Case
Investigators are probing the links between the recent Surrey
slayings of two criminals who were both involved in a major
cross-border cocaine-marijuana smuggling ring, The Vancouver Sun has learned.

Gurpreet Singh (Gary) Dhaliwal, gunned down last week, and Inderjit
Singh (Andy) Rai, murdered last May, were both part of a criminal
organization that has seen five members busted on both sides of the
border in the last 18 months.

Both men were named at the Seattle trial of B.C. lawyer Kuldip Singh
Chaggar last April as having approached Chaggar to ask a jailed gang
member to change her statement to authorities after she was caught
entering Canada with $1.5-million worth of cocaine for Dhaliwal's organization.

Chaggar was convicted of witness tampering and is serving a one-year sentence.

Insp. Wayne Rideout, the RCMP officer in charge of the integrated
homicide investigation team, said police are examining the links
between Rai and Dhaliwal.

"They are known to each other. Both cases are active IHIT
investigations. Both are believed to have been involved in organized
crime," Rideout said Thursday.

After Rai was gunned down, Dhaliwal went to India for an extended
stay. He returned shortly before he was shot to death in the driveway
of his Surrey home close to midnight last Friday.

U.S. Attorney Todd Greenberg said the RCMP contacted his office after
each of the slayings, given that the men featured prominently in his
case against Chaggar.

Greenberg said Thursday that witnesses in the Chaggar case testified
that both Dhaliwal and Rai met repeatedly with Chaggar, who was not
their lawyer, in the weeks before Chaggar went to a Seattle-area jail
to visit the 19-year-old woman caught with the cocaine.

Greenberg argued that both Rai and Dhaliwal used Chaggar as a
"consigliere" -- an adviser -- for their criminal gang because the
lawyer had the credentials to get into the jail and approach the young woman.

Greenberg said Dhaliwal asked Chaggar to intervene after the drug
bust and the lawyer "reached out his tentacles to try to keep tabs"
on what the woman might be telling the prosecution.

"The defendant was the hired-gun of the Dhaliwal organization," Greenberg said.

In one conversation recorded by U.S. authorities, the woman asked
Chaggar if "Gary" was mad at her and if Dhaliwal or the others would
do anything to her.

Chaggar chuckled and said: "Gary thinks that his, you know, life is
on the line because of what is said ... And [another accused] thinks
he's going to spend 23 years in jail ... It's difficult to know how
these guys think, right?"

Greenberg said the young woman testified at the trial about the role
of both Rai and Dhaliwal in the drug gang.

"She testified about who [Rai] was and how he worked with Gary and
then he gets wacked," Greenberg said.

Dhaliwal, who was 25 when he was murdered, made more than 30 calls to
Chaggar between the time the cocaine shipment was intercepted July
16, 2004 and when Chaggar was arrested on the tampering charges two
months later.

Rai and Dhaliwal had several charges and convictions -- although none
together -- on trafficking and possession charges over the last five
years in B.C., according to court records.

The records indicate that neither had used Chaggar as a lawyer for
recent cases, though Chaggar once acted for Dhaliwal on a 2000 Surrey
charge of possession of stolen property.