Charges against four of five accused now withdrawn in alleged extortion plot against realtor
BRAMPTON: The charge of criminal harassment against Zorawar Mahal, 25, in the alleged extortion plot against Brampton realtor Dale Mundi was withdrawn on Thursday, his lawyer Malina A. Roshan told The VOICE.
The Crown found there was “no reasonable prospect of a conviction.”
Initially five men had been charged in the case, but on June 23, charges of extortion and obstruct justice against York Regional Police Sgt. Gurdip Panaich were dropped. The Crown told the court there were “no reasonable prospects of conviction” and that the allegations did not meet a “criminal code standard,” Danielle Robitaille, partner at Henein Hutchison LLP, told the media.
On July 9, the charge of extortion against Surjit Brar, 46, was withdrawn and the charges of two counts of criminal harassment and one count each of extortion and obstruction of justice were withdrawn against Inderjit “Vick” Bains, 46. Both were also represented by Malina A. Roshan who told The VOICE at the time that Assistant Crown Attorney Amber Lepchuk determined that the allegations did not meet a “criminal code standard” and that there were “no reasonable prospects of a conviction”.
The fifth accused in the case is Rajkanwar Mangat, 39, of Caledon who was charged with two counts of unauthorized possession of a firearm, four counts of unauthorized possession of prohibited device or ammunition, two counts of careless storage of a firearm, four counts of breach of firearms regulation, and two counts of possession of a loaded prohibited or restricted firearm.
IN March, Peel Regional Police in a press release said that in February, an investigation commenced when a real estate salesman from Brampton, Dale Mundi, contacted police after false information that was detrimental to his personal and professional reputation was widely circulated on the Internet. This dissemination of information was followed by demands for a large sum of money to have the information removed.
Investigators identified and arrested five people in relation to this extortion plot. A search warrant was executed at a residence in Peel Region and a number of loaded and insecure firearms were seized.
Mundi told a South Asian publication back in March that he had to face the consequences of a fake Twitter account as someone put up posts attacking Muslims and some of them came to his house to question him. Fake websites revealed his home and office addresses and phone numbers and accused him of horrible sex crimes including assaulting underage girls.
Mundi said as a result of such vicious falsehoods, his mother had a heart attack, his wife got depressed and his two kids hated attending school. His business was ruined as they had only been able to do one real estate deal in the past month as compared to three or four deals a week before this crisis.
But the Panaichs had always maintained that Sgt. Panaich was innocent.