HE RAN A DEATH SQUAD

Former gangster Bal Buttar reveals how he arranged the murders of
Indo-Canadian rivals in a brutal, drug-fuelled underworld that has
claimed dozens of young lives. In exclusive interviews with The Sun's
Kim Bolan, he warns teens not to be tempted by the promise of wealth
and power into a world where gangsters betray their best friends.

A former gangster paralysed in a 2001 shooting admits he arranged the
unsolved 1998 murder of crime boss Bindy Johal, even though he was
working under Johal in the "Indo-Canadian Mafia" at the time.

Bal Buttar, now a 28-year-old blind quadriplegic, told The Vancouver
Sun in exclusive interviews that he felt he had to take Johal out
because of erratic behaviour by the notorious cocaine dealer that
included killing off a series of his own associates.

"If I hadn't killed him, he would have got me," Buttar explained. "I
had no choice."

Buttar, who was shot twice in the head at a Vancouver hair salon in
August 2001, also confessed to having a role in other unsolved murders.

In a series of interviews, he offered a disturbing glimpse into a
criminal underworld that lures teens craving attention, money and
power and turns them into gangsters, drug dealers and killers willing
to betray their best friends to move up in the organization.

He now says he has found God and abandoned his criminal ways. He wants
to go public to help kids avoid the path he chose as a teenager when
he met Johal and became part of a criminal organization that grew to
be worth millions.

He is also working on a book about his life and wants to start a
foundation to aid crime victims.

His objective in writing the book is not to name names, but to explain
what has gone on in recent years.

"I've never in my life been a rat and I'll never be one," Buttar
said.

"I never used to believe in God before. But once he gave me a second
chance, I knew it was for a reason and that reason is to write a book."

He'd like to take his message to school children: "If this ever comes
to you, watch out -- you've got two ways to go, either the right or
the wrong."

As part of his newfound mission, Buttar agreed to provide information
to a Sun reporter about a string of unsolved murders in recent years
involving young Indo-Canadian men.

Murder for Hire

In the mid-1990s, Johal founded a shadowy, five-member hit squad
called "The Elite" that Buttar said was responsible for 25 to 30 murders.

Johal controlled The Elite, but would pass that control to Buttar and
others at various times, he said, refusing to name members.

Buttar said Johal ordered him to arrange the July 1998 Vancouver
murder of Vinuse News MacKenzie and the unsuccessful October 1998
attempt on the life of Johal associate Peter Gill.

"I didn't want to do this job that Bindy gave me to do. Before, when I
was in jail with Bindy, Bindy told me, 'You are going to be the one
underneath me. You listen to me. If you take care of things at your
end, I'll be happy with you brother. If you f--- me over, I'll kill
you. Right.' "

It was The Elite that Buttar turned to in December 1998 to gun down
Johal as he hit the dance floor at the Palladium nightclub.

Buttar said he also used The Elite "a few times" more after he took
over Johal's criminal empire.

He admitted to being "the middleman" who arranged for The Elite to
kill 25-year-old Kuldip Singh in September 1999. Buttar said the other
victim in the Richmond shooting, Vikash Naidu, was not the target.

Buttar said he last turned to The Elite in the spring of 2002, looking
for revenge for the slaying of his younger brother Kelly a few months
earlier.

The Elite took care of Jaskaran Singh Chima in March of that year
because he was suspected of being one of the shooters who sprayed
Kelly with gunfire at a Richmond wedding reception, Buttar said.

And in June 2002 The Elite gunned down high-profile drug trafficker
Robbie Kandola outside his Coal Harbour apartment because he ordered
Kelly's December 2001 execution, Buttar said.

"My crew -- my old crew, not my crew any more -- dealt with Kandola
because he had a hand in killing my brother," he said.

"Kandola was running big cocaine from the downtown area. He had his
pad downtown. He was running cocaine all over the Vancouver area,
Moberly area. All of the people who were buying drugs were buying from
Robbie Kandola."

Buttar blamed Kandola for the unsolved May 2000 murder of Mike Brar, a
bodyguard for accused drug trafficker Ranjit Cheema, who is still
fighting his extradition to the United States. Brar was killed outside
a west-side wedding attended by former premier turned federal Health
Minister Ujjal Dosanjh.

Asked if he feared criminal charges for disclosing so much information
about so many unsolved murders, Buttar said matter-of-factly: "They
can't do nothing to me now. What are they going to do? Where are they
going to send me now? They can't send me anywhere. All this is going
to be in my book."

'God Will Punish Them'

Buttar has serious medical needs after his near-fatal shooting. He is
paralysed from the chest down, but has some movement in his hand and
hopes to recover even more. He is also "blind as a bat."

But he still has some of the pride in his appearance that he had
during his gang days. He wears the trademark gangster goatee and
reflective sunglasses, as well as a white velour track suit and
running shoes.

He admits his attention to his appearance made him an easy target on
Aug. 3, 2001, when his best friend Gary Rai offered to take him to a
Victoria Drive beauty parlour to get his legs waxed.

"I was into body-building... He took me to the wax place down on
Victoria -- Kohli's. Gary took me there and Gary Rai was on the phone
all day and I didn't pay attention to him," Buttar said with
bitterness in his voice.

What he didn't know is that Rai had collaborated with some of his
other former associates -- Hawryluk and a gangster Buttar will only
call "The Teeth" because he is still alive and has never been charged.

He said "The Teeth" had been operating as Buttar's driver and had
fallen in love with Buttar's girlfriend. The woman, as well as her
newfound love, decided to take Buttar out.

"To get me out of the way, these guys set me up," Buttar
said.

Hawryluk agreed to be the shooter because Buttar had thrown him out of
the organization over his drug use.

"When you are initiated into this gang we have, you can't do drugs.
You can drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes, but no drugs at all. Tyler
Hawryluk became a junkie," Buttar said. "He used to call my house all
the time and I would cut him off and say, 'Don't call my house.' And
then he went to the other side -- a different party -- and started
talking to them. They said listen, we'll support you, give you money
- -- take care of Bal."

Buttar clearly feels most betrayed by Rai, who was ironically killed
in the same shooting that left him in a wheelchair.

As for "The Teeth," Buttar said: "God will punish him. I believe in
God now. God will punish him. Quite a few people are out there who
shouldn't be out there. But God will punish them."

Baby Brother Gunned Down

Everyone who saw the blood-spattered salon could not believe Buttar
survived. He does not remember seeing the shooter or knowing what was
unfolding that summer evening.

"All I remember is waking up in the dark. Can't open my mouth. My
mouth and jaw is shut," he said, crediting his mother with remaining
by his side throughout the first difficult months.

"But after a month or two, I got used to my new life. I was in a lot
of pain. I was crying a lot. I can't believe it had happened to me. I
am not dead or alive. I am right in the middle. Why did God do this? I
don't know why."

Just four months after he was shot, his mother and older brother Manny
came to his hospital bed and told them that Kelly, the family baby,
had been murdered in a targeted hit. The body of his 22-year-old
brother was just a few floors below in the same hospital. That was
Buttar's darkest hour. For a time, he wished that he had also died.

After the grief subsided, he made sure there was revenge.

But the more he kept hearing of the continuing violence plaguing his
community, the more Buttar began to regret his contributions to the
problem. He now thinks God allowed him to survive two bullets to the
head to help youths stay away from violent gangs that have been
glamourized for years.

"It's because of the easy money. We have marijuana here and people say
it is a beautiful drug," he said. "But when people deal big quantities
of that, there is murder. All of this violence is caused by marijuana.
A lot happens with marijuana."

Buttar thinks he was attracted to the criminal world because he
struggled with attention deficit disorder in school and was often
bullied and teased. He also wore a turban and other kids would taunt
him in the school yard, calling him names.

He compensated by getting tough -- instilling fear in others around
him.

"I learned how to give attention to people by giving them fear. And
then with fear, they would listen to me. Whatever I would tell them to
do, they would do," he said.

First came fights. Then knives, guns and full-fledged assaults. He was
charged and convicted, with an associate, of extortion, kidnapping and
unlawful confinement. He did stints in youth detention and a
wilderness program, but ran away.

During one stretch in the Vancouver pre-trial jail, he ended up
sharing a cell with Johal, who had been charged in December 1996 with
kidnapping the brother of a rival gang leader.

Johal was already notorious, having been acquitted in 1995 of the
high-profile murders of gang brothers Ron and Jimmy Dosanjh.

In jail, Buttar pledged his allegiance to Johal -- "we became, fully,
brothers."

"When Bindy got out, that's when we started going out clubbing,
beating up people, extortion," Buttar said.

Johal took Buttar, then just 150 pounds, to the gym regularly and gave
him steroids. He packed on 100 pounds. "I could knock anybody down --
you know what I mean?"

The Indo-Canadian Mafia

Johal built a multi-faceted criminal business, in which Buttar and
another associate named Roman "Danny" Mann had major roles.

Buttar said Mann was in charge of about 15 men who handled the drug
trafficking wing of the business and paid Johal tens of thousands of
dollars each month.

Buttar had a 20-person crew involved in a variety of mafia-like crimes
"and Bindy would get a piece of the action off any operations we would
do."

"I'm talking about stealing loads of lumber, computers, racketeering,"
he said.

Some of the ventures were surprisingly creative. Buttar knew many
truckers in Surrey willing to participate in inside rip-offs, in which
they would claim their cargo had been stolen so that Buttar could sell
it on the street.

"I would get about 15 to 20 grand off each truck load. We would get
three loads a month," he said.

Another scheme involved buying totaled luxury cars from the U.S. and
bringing them across the border. Buttar's crew would take them to be
crushed, but not before removing the ignition and vehicle registration
number. He would then "get one of the guys to go and steal a car like
that, change the ignition, change the number and we would sell it at
the auction.

We would spend about $2,000 a car and we would sell it for about
$15,000-$16,000. That was a really good network we had going there."

Buttar said the Johal empire grew from earnings of about $500,000 in
its first year as a gang to about $3 to $4 million a year when Buttar
ordered Johal's murder -- "We were the Indo-Canadian Mafia. That's
what we called ourselves."

One of the branches of the business was The Elite hit squad, which
would get between $15,000 and $20,000 a killing, Buttar said.

"Those guys were murder-for-hire. Five members. Bindy was in charge
of that," he said. "Whoever Bindy wanted murdered, they would go do
it."

Crime Family Unravels

By the summer and fall of 1998, Johal was floundering. He ripped off
some of his own associates and people were losing confidence in him,
including Buttar.

But one incident Buttar witnessed shocked him so much, he realized he
would have to kill Johal.

Buttar, his brother Kelly, a friend named Derek Shankar and a few
others went out clubbing one night in September 1998.

After several drinks, Shankar decided to call Johal on his cell phone
to get him to party.

"And Bindy says I am tired man, I don't want to go," Buttar
recalled.

He said Shankar, who was extremely drunk, started razzing Johal,
calling him an idiot and a baby and swearing at him for staying home.

"And Bindy goes -- watch your language, don't say these things to me .
. . Bindy took it to heart."

When Buttar and his crew returned home in a truck about 3 a.m., Johal
was waiting for them with Roman Mann.

Buttar knew there would be trouble. Johal asked where Shankar was and
was told he was sleeping in the truck. Buttar said Johal asked him to
go for a drive and he jumped in the truck.

"I was shooting the shit with him. I said, 'These guys didn't mean it.
Just let these guys go,' and he drove me underneath the Queensborough
Bridge," Buttar recalled.

He said he woke up Shankar and suggested the two of them leave
quickly. First, they went to relieve themselves.

"All of a sudden I hear a big noise and I turn around and there is
Derek Shankar going down . . . Bindy shot him. Bindy looks at me. I
had my piece. I'm thinking hey, should I pull my piece on him and I
thought, no that's too quick. I was about to jump in the truck and he
says no, help me dump him in the water. So I chucked him in the water.
Derek Shankar -- you've got to understand -- I have known that guy for
a long time. He was from Richmond. He was one of the Richmond boys. So
I saw [Bindy] kill him. We chucked him in the water. We chucked the
gun off the Queensborough Bridge."

The stunning murder led to Johal's downfall, Buttar
said.

"When Derek Shankar went down, Bindy's whole brigade went down. You
know what I mean? He took down one of the best kids. He was a guy who
was a party animal with us. But he was a legit kid. He never f---ed
around."

Visiting the Hells Angels

Shankar had been extremely close to Kelly Buttar, who was devastated
at the news of his death. "My brother took it hard and said -- 'I
can't believe you were there and you didn't do anything.' You gotta
understand the guy was watching me like a hawk. If I made one move, I
know he would have pulled a gun on me."

Buttar said that he promised his brother he would get revenge. "Don't
worry, I'll take care of it soon," he told Kelly.

In the meantime, Johal got into a dispute with the Hells Angels. He
visited their Vancouver clubhouse with Buttar and Mann one fall
evening after getting invited by a member he met at a downtown club.
When the trio arrived, Johal was denied entry, which angered his
underlings -- especially Buttar.

"I got choked. I said, 'Bindy look, I told you not to go there and now
these guys have made us look like fools. They are telling us not to go
in there. I pulled out my gun and said shoot the mother in the leg.' I
was drunk myself," Buttar recalled.

He said Johal was cool about the dispute but that Buttar was so angry
he shot his gun in the air several times.

"We got in the car and we left. These guys thought we shot at the
clubhouse.

So what happened in the news -- they said Hells Angels clubhouse got
shot up, linked to Bindy Johal or something. I thought that's
hilarious. He never did that. It was me," Buttar said.

"That brought heat for Bindy and we started breaking
down."

Mann wanted out and told Johal, which led to Johal punching him in the
face. When Buttar saw Mann's fat lip, he could also see that
everything was unraveling fast.

"The next thing I know -- the next day or two days later -- I hear
Roman's body was found behind a warehouse and I knew right away that
it was Bindy. Bindy was calling my cell and saying we've got to go to
Roman's funeral. We've got to find out if the HAs did this. Blame it
on the HAs," he said, referring to the Hells Angels.

Buttar was suspicious when Johal wanted to go out clubbing after
leaving Mann's grieving family.

"I said, 'Why the hell do I want to go clubbing when my best friend
died. My other guy Derek died and now you want to go clubbing with
me?'" Buttar told Johal.

Shot Dead for $20,000

In early December 1998 Buttar was driving to a Surrey club with his
boss when Johal pulled a 360-degree turn in the middle of Scott Road.
The Delta police pulled the pair over.

"He pulls out a gun. I couldn't believe it because this guy doesn't
carry. He tells me when he's going to carry a gun," Buttar said.

It dawned on him that Johal had probably planned to kill his loyal
lieutenant that night.

As the police checked the car's registration, Johal asked Buttar to
hide the weapon, but the officer had already seen it and called for
backup. The pair were arrested.

"All night he was whining -- 'Oh, I can't go through this again -- for
eight or nine months remand and I won't even beat the case,' " Buttar
quoted Johal as saying.

Johal asked Buttar to say the gun was his and Buttar agreed to plead
guilty.

It would give him a perfect alibi for Johal's murder -- he would be in
jail when the hit took place on Dec. 20, 1998.

Buttar said The Elite was now taking orders from him because of the
increasing distrust of Johal. "When Bindy was getting reckless, I took
over The Elite. I told them to get him. I gave them $20,000 and they
got Bindy in a nightclub for $20,000."

"The Elite is still out there," Buttar said. "I'm still friends with
them."

Despite all the murders of Indo-Canadian mafia kingpins, Buttar
believes the problem of gangsterism in his community is increasing.

All of the crew members trained by Johal and later Buttar have formed
their own crews, creating an exponentially larger problem.

'Stop the Killing'

"All these guys are dying over greed, power. They want to go create
their own power struggle. That is what it is -- a power struggle. Jump
on top real fast. You know if you jump on top real fast, these people
make you lots of money," he said.

Take the case of Ned Mander, who disappeared in September 2001 -- the
same night his friend Rick Bhatti was murdered in a gangland-style hit
in Surrey.

Buttar said Mander had a good, affluent family and did not need to get
involved in illegal activity. But he was tempted when Buttar and Johal
first talked to him about a drug scheme that would involve using his
business, which imported marble from India. Johal had the idea of
drilling holes in the marble to hide heroin. With putty and stone
covering the secret compartment, it would remain undetected by sniffer
dogs.

Buttar said he was involved in one shipment with Mander, but the
quality of the Indian heroin was not good enough for the B.C. market.

"It is brownish. You got to get it tested before you take it and all
that," he said.

He then referred Mander to some new partners, who continued the
scheme, and Buttar was paid "a small finder's fee."

Mander's disappearance, and the murders of his friends -- Bhatti and
Gary Sidhu -- within months, was related to the scheme going bad,
Buttar said.

Mander and his friends were not gangsters, but people who saw a way to
make a quick buck and got killed in the process. "These guys were
minor," Buttar said. "They got involved in one big scheme."

Another criminal gang put up cash for the heroin, but someone decided
to give them fake dope after taking the cash. Mander did not even know
about the scam, Buttar said.

When the gang realized it had been ripped off, it took its
revenge.

Buttar's take on the high-profile slayings conflicts with the police
theory that Bhatti and Sidhu were killed in retaliation for the
September 2001 Richmond murder of Kam Jawanda by a friend of theirs
named Sarb Dhanda.

Dhanda and Jawanda had been fighting over a young woman who had been
seeing Jawanda, but starting dating Dhanda.

Buttar said the Jawanda killing was strictly personal, but that Dhanda
was also involved in the drug scheme with Bhatti, Sidhu and Mander.

He also said a pair of killings in November 2001 was related to the
same dispute over the heroin scheme. The bodies of Sukhjinder Singh
Sahota of Surrey and Gurpreet Singh Butter, of Coquitlam, were found
on a dike in Richmond.

Buttar said he tried to steer Mander away from the criminal life. He
called Mander "an idiot" for getting involved, but the temptation was
too great.

"A guy gets offered $1 million a year to bring the heroin across from
India, what do you think? I would do the same thing."

With the money so great, the Indo-Canadian gangs are expanding and
getting into marijuana grow operations, as they continue to transport
pot to the U.S., Buttar said.

He said the gangs are broken down geographically, with different
groups controlling Richmond, Surrey, Abbotsford, Vancouver and Port
Coquitlam.

"The police will never find a way to break these guys," he said. "Like
I told you, only the certain people in The Elite know they can do this
shit and they keep their mouth shut and they do it."

He said the gangs are well organized, despite the seemingly random
tit-for-tat slayings. "That is why they can't catch all the killers.
The only ones they can catch is the ones who rat each other out," he
said.

Buttar doesn't know if his crusade to expose the dangers will make a
difference. But he is hoping it will.

"I am alive for a reason," he said.

"I have to write this book and tell young kids to get away from this.
We've got to stop the killing."

[sidebar]

INSIDE THE INDO-CANADIAN MAFIA:

Bal Buttar was born the second of three brothers on Dec. 11, 1975. He
grew up in Richmond, and was involved in petty crime as a teenager.
But his criminal connections became much more serious after a chance
meeting with a brutal crime boss seven years ago.

Early 1997 - Bal Buttar becomes a cellmate of Bindy Johal at the
Vancouver pre-trial jail, beginning his dangerous association with the
notorious cocaine dealer.

January 19, 1997 - Buttar says Johal orders the fatal hit on Amarjit
Singh Dheil, 31, outside a Marpole community centre.

Oct. 21, 1997 - Buttar says Johal ordered the murder of Gorinder Singh
Khun Khun, 24. Johal believed Khun Khun was responsible for the April
1994 attempt on his life that left his innocent neighbour, Glen Olson,
dead.

July 1, 1998 - Buttar says he arranged for the murder of Vinuse News
MacKenzie on Johal's orders. Johal claimed MacKenzie had drugs in the
house. Buttar thinks Johal was really fighting with MacKenzie over a
girlfriend.

Sept. 19, 1998 -- Johal friend Derek Chand Shankar, 19, is found shot
to death under the Queensborough Bridge in New Westminster. Buttar
says he

witnessed Johal shoot Shankar after Shankar had been rude to the crime
boss.

Oct. 7, 1998 -- Drug dealer Vikash Chand, 26, is shot dead outside
Rags to Riches Motorcars in Burnaby. Buttar says he drove Johal and
Roman (Danny) Mann to the scene shortly after the killing because
Chand was their friend, but that Johal had nothing to do with the hit.

Oct. 25, 1998 - Buttar says he arranged for the hitman who went to
kill former Johal associate Peter Gill as he left for the annual
bikers' toy run. He says Johal ordered the hit, but that the gunman's
semi-automatic jammed and Gill escaped.

Nov. 29, 1998 -- Johal associate Roman (Danny) Mann, 22, is found
murdered in New Westminster. Buttar says Johal killed Mann, his close
associate, after Mann said he wanted to leave the criminal
organization.

Dec. 5, 1998 - Johal and Buttar are arrested on Scott Road by Delta
police after a .45-calibre handgun was found in their car. Buttar says
the gun belonged to Johal who he believes intended to execute him that
night.

Dec. 20, 1998 - Buttar says he ordered the hit on Bindy Johal, 27,
which was carried out on the dance floor of Vancouver's Palladium
nightclub. He said he felt Johal would have killed him if he had not
acted when he did.

Sept. 3, 1999 - Buttar said he was the middleman in setting up the
Richmond hit on Kuldeep Singh, 25. The other victim, Vikash Naidu, 23,
of Vancouver, was not the intended target.

Aug. 3, 2001 - Buttar is taken to a Vancouver salon by his close
friend Gary Rai, who he now believes had plotted with other associates
to murder him. Rai is shot dead and Buttar survives two bullets to the
head. Others involved in the plot were former associate Tyler
Hawryluk, Buttar's girlfriend and another associate he has dubbed "The
Teeth."

Aug. 20, 2001 -Tyler Hawryluk, 22, is found shot dead in Burnaby.
Buttar said his crew killed Hawryluk for revenge in his near-fatal
shooting two weeks earlier.

Dec. 22, 2001 - Kelly Buttar, 22, is gunned down at a Richmond
wedding. Bal Buttar says the hit on his kid brother was arranged by
cocaine trafficker Robbie Kandola who wrongly believed Kelly was
selling drugs on his turf.

March 18, 2002 -- New Westminster police discover the body of
25-year-old Jaskaran Singh Chima in a burning car under the Alex
Fraser Bridge. Chima was a known drug dealer. Buttar says the murder
was in retaliation for his brother Kelly's slaying.

June 23, 2002 -- Drug dealer Robbie Kandola is sprayed with bullets by
killers waiting for him as he gets out of a cab in front of his Coal
Harbour apartment. Buttar says the hit on Kandola was also in
retaliation for his brother's murder six months earlier.

September 2004 - Bal Buttar says he regrets his criminal past and
wants to write a book to warn kids to stay away from gang life.

SPECIAL SERIES:

FRIDAY, SEPT. 10

- -SECRET 'HIT LIST': Targeting B.C.'s crime bosses.

SATURDAY, SEPT. 11

- - HELLS ANGELS: Outlaw motorcycle gang members and the businesses they
own.

TODAY

- - GANG SLAYINGS: A former Indo-Canadian gangster has details on a
series of unsolved murders.

SATURDAY, SEPT. 18

- - Young & violent: Drug-smuggling and the extreme violence of
Indo-Canadian gangs.

SATURDAY, SEPT. 25

- - CASH CROP: How the marijuana trade fuels organized
crime.

SATURDAY, OCT. 2

- - GOING UNDERCOVER: Money-laundering and the dangerous life of an
undercover cop.

SATURDAY, OCT. 9

- - PURSUING JUSTICE: What we must do to put more perpetrators of
organized crime behind bars.

Ran with fact boxes "Special Series" and "Inside the Indo-Canadian
Mafia", which have been appended to the end of the story.; Interview
with Bal Buttar.