CITY FAMILY CAUGHT IN DRUG WORLD EXTORTION

Man Pleads Guilty To Role In Family's Ordeal

brantford - High-stakes drug deals gone awry, gun-toting kidnappers, a
Punjabi enforcer, money stashed behind drywall and mysterious Chinese
drug bosses.

Thrilling highlights of a new movie? Not even close.

These were bits of a bizarre tale presented Friday in a city courtroom.

A Stoney Creek man named Gurvirinder Mangat, 30, pleaded guilty in
Ontario Court to one count of extortion for playing the role of
enforcer in this twisted tale. All other charges laid against him in
connection with the incident were withdrawn.

Harvinder Pal Singh, his wife Amrit-Balkaur Hundal and their children,
aged three and one, were kidnapped by persons unknown from their city
home six days before last Christmas and held for three days in
Mississauga and the Niagara Region.

Singh was involved in trafficking and people higher on the underworld
ladder were impatient for payment of an estimated $400,000 in drug
money, court heard.

Collect debt

It was alleged that Mangat's bosses wanted to collect the debt from
Singh, whom they believed ripped them off for a January 2006 shipment
of drugs worth nearly $500,000 that had crossed the border into the U.S.

To encourage repayment of the debt, three men were hired to kidnap
Singh and his family.

On Dec. 19, 2006, at about 11 p.m., the doorbell rang at Singh's
residence. Hundal was in the kitchen, cooking. Her one-year-old child
was with her. Singh was downstairs watching television with their
three-year-old child.

Hundal peeked outside but saw no one. So, she reached out and opened
the door.

The three intruders burst inside and pushed Hundal to the floor.

The intruders corralled the family upstairs. Two of men brandished
.45-calibre revolvers. Singh knew why the men were there, court heard.
They had been sent to recoup the drug money.

Singh retrieved an orange gym bag from a bedroom and removed $96,000
in cash that had been stuffed inside. Another $4,000 was added to the
pot from Hundal's wallet.

Hustled into van

The family was then hustled into a silver van and driven to a
residence on Brougham Street in Mississauga.

Once there, Singh was confronted by Mangat, who shoved a replica gun
into his face. Speaking in Punjabi, Mangat accused Singh of cheating
him and said he wanted the $400,000 - now.

"Pay the $400,000 or I'll give you to the Chinese," Mangat
said.

The unnamed and unidentified Chinese are believed to have been
Mangat's bosses and the owners of the drugs, court heard.

Mangat then lowered the replica gun to Singh's knees and threatened to
blow off his kneecaps.

There was also another, unidentified, man at the residence, who
assisted Mangat in extorting the cash from Singh.

The Singh family was then transported to a farmhouse near Niagara
Falls or Fort Erie.

From there, Singh was allowed to leave, under the close supervision
of one of his black male captors, to visit some of his sources in an
attempt to scrape together more cash.

During this time, Singh managed to send a message to a friend that his
family had been kidnapped and he was being held hostage.

Singh and the kidnappers also returned to Singh's Brantford home,
where a further $210,000 was added to the drug dealers' reimbursement,
having been removed from its hiding place in the drywall.

After handing over a total of $310,000 in outstanding drug money,
Singh and his family were released. They were dropped off with their
vehicle, strangely, just outside the Toronto Detention Centre.

On their way home, the family's vehicle was stopped by police, who had
been alerted to the apparent kidnapping, and the allegations of the
crime were reported.

Hundal has since left the country with her children and returned to
India.

Court heard that Mangat, a landed immigrant from the Punjab, has
resided in Canada since 1994. He is married and has two children. He
had no criminal record at the time of the extortion but has since been
convicted of an unrelated offence, court heard.

The Crown and defence presented a joint submission to the court for a
sentence of time served plus probation for Mangat, who had spent 110
days in jail since his arrest on Jan. 8. Those 110 days were
considered the equivalent of having spent about seven months behind
bars, based on the regularly accepted two-for-one formula.

The Crown's case, had the matter gone to trial, was in serious
jeopardy, court heard.

Singh's wife and children had fled to India with no apparent intention
of returning. As well, it seemed that Singh would have refused to
testify at trial.

Justice Ken Lenz accepted the joint submission.

The judge acknowledged that Mangat's sentence of time served plus
probation for two years was on the "extreme low-end" but, given the
problems with the Crown's case and the "slim to nil" likelihood of
conviction at trial, it was better to have a conviction and probation
to protect the community than nothing at all.

"Mangat now has a record reflecting his serious bad character and bad
judgment," the judge said.

Lenz also said he had some sympathy for Singh's family but none for
Singh. He added that he thought it unlikely the public at large cares
whether drug traffickers extort money from one another to replenish
their ill-gotten gains.

Mangat was placed on probation for two years. One of the terms of his
probation bans him from entering Brant County except for travelling
directly through the county on Highway 403.

Charges of forcible confinement and extortion earlier laid against
Asad Malik, 39, of Mississauga, were withdrawn. Malik lived at his
brother's house in Mississauga (the house where the Singh family was
taken) but neither Singh nor his wife could identify Malik as having
had any involvement in the crime.

The three kidnappers were never identified.