A man involved in a human smuggling operation resulting in the tragic deaths of a family of four near the Manitoba-Minnesota border is set to have his appeal heard by a U.S. court next month. The bodies of Jagdish Patel, his wife Vaishali, and their two children were discovered in a snow-covered field close to the U.S. border in January 2022.
The court in St. Paul, Minnesota, is scheduled to review the appeal made by Steve Shand’s attorney on October 23. Shand, a Florida resident, was apprehended near the border on the same night the Patel family perished and was subsequently sentenced to 6½ years in prison in Fergus Falls in the previous year.
Shand’s lawyer has petitioned the United States Court of Appeals to overturn his client’s conviction and sentence in federal court, urging for a retrial or other appropriate legal actions. Shand was found guilty alongside Harshkumar Patel, who received a 10-year prison term for orchestrating the smuggling scheme that led to the tragic incident.
The appeal process is anticipated to result in a written decision at a later date, following the tragic incident where the family succumbed to the extreme cold weather conditions near the border.