HIGH PROFILE LAWYER GETS ONE YEAR IN JAIL

A U.S. judge has given well-known B.C. lawyer Kuldip Chaggar one year
and one day in jail for witness tampering.

At his sentencing hearing Friday in Seattle, an emotional Chaggar
apologized for pretending to be the lawyer of a witness in a U.S. drug
smuggling case in order to visit her in a Washington State jail last
September, calling it a "short-sighted" and "stupid" mistake, "one
that has cost me a career."

However, Chaggar insisted he did not threaten the woman, Sunita Vartia
to get her to change her testimony, and that he was only trying to
help her.

A sworn statement by an agent for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency
(DEA) said Chaggar wanted Vartia to change her story about Sandeep
Kumar Dhillon, a B.C. man charged with cross-border cocaine smuggling.

Vartia, a Canadian arrested for trying to smuggle cocaine into the
U.S., had made a statement to American authorities that "would tend to
inculpate Dhillon at trial (in Canada)" DEA agent Clark Leininger stated.

Leininger said a shaken Vartia told corrections officers that Chaggar
threatened her and her family when she balked at changing her
testimony, asking her, "where will you hide in Canada when you get
out?"

At his sentencing hearing, a U.S. prosecutor called Chaggar "corrupt"
and said he should get 97 months in jail, while Chaggar's lawyer said
his client should get probation.

Chaggar is a Burnaby-based lawyer who has been associated with a
number of high-profile trials, including cases involving convicted Air
India bomber Inderjit Singh Reyat and his wife, Satnam Kaur Reyat.

Chaggar represented Reyat and his family free of charge for six years,
beginning in 1995 while Reyat was serving a 10-year prison sentence in
Matsqui for building a bomb that blew up in June, 1985 at Narita
airport in Japan.

Chaggar also represented Reyat's wife, who pleaded guilty in 2000 to
failing to declare $108,994 in income received during the same
seven-year period she was paid $109,054 in welfare benefits.

Chaggar can appeal the sentence and his earlier conviction on two
counts of witness tampering, but he has already given an undertaking
to the Law Society of B.C. that he will cease practising law.

The society, the body that regulates lawyers' conduct in the province,
said it will review the decision before deciding whether further
disciplinary action is required.