Police were still investigating today the murder of an Indian-Canadian gangster found shot to death in front of a luxury Phuket villa.
The police are working to obtain more information from their Canadian and Indian counterparts about Jimi “Slice” Sandhu, a 32-year-old Indian-born Canadian kicked out of that country six years ago, according to deputy national police spokesperson Col. Krissana Pattanacharoen.
Krissana said the two gunmen suspects in Sandhu’s murder are likely Russian-speaking foreign nationals, based on the testimony of a witness who heard them speak. Nineteen spent 9mm and .38 casings were found at Friday’s murder scene.
Police today were trying to establish the route taken by the assassins. They told immigration officers to be on the lookout for them.
Sandhu was shot at around 10:30pm on Friday while he was parking his red MG sports car in front of the Beachfront Hotel Phuket where he was staying in a luxury villa. Police initially identified the man by his Canadian passport as Mandeep Singh.
He was wanted by the authorities back in the Canadian province of British Columbia.
According to the Vancouver Sun, his name was actually Jimi “Slice” Sandhu, and his murder has triggered fear of reprisal violence in British Columbia, where a number of gangs locked in a “violent war” cheered Sandhu’s murder on social media.
He moved to Canada at 7 and was deported in 2016 following a series of serious assaults, the paper said. Two years later, he went on the run in India after being charged with operating a “large ketamine factory.”
Thai police confirmed the dead man’s fingerprints matched those of a suspect sought by Canadian authorities, according to Maj. Gen. Khemarin Hatsasiri of the police foreign affairs division. So far the police have said that Sandhu entered Thailand on Jan. 27 on a private flight that connected through Malaysia. Immigration records show he first entered Thailand in 2016 – the same year he was deported from Canada for “serious criminality.”
