Some Indian Americans who got into trouble with the law.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: A number of Indian Americans and Indians living in America were in the news this year for running afoul of the law.
A random list of names that made the news this year for alleged criminal activities:
Purna Chandra Aramalla
Purna Chandra Aramalla, 65, was arrested and charged in December for defrauding Medicare and Medicaid by selling illegally diverted prescription drugs. Aramalla operated two pharmacies in New York City: A Fair Deal Pharmacy Inc. in Queens, and Quality Health Drug Inc. in the Bronx. Both, as it turns out, were fronts for illicit prescription drug sales that netted Aramalla millions of dollars in profits.
The scheme involved purchasing pharmaceuticals, specifically those used by sufferers of HIV, from other patients rather than directly from the suppliers and manufacturers. Patients who bought the drugs for themselves often found themselves not using everything that they ordered, so would sell them to Aramalla for a lower price. Aramalla then repackaged those drugs to make them look like they were brand-new, and sold them, receiving reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid in doing so. The only problem is that both of those federal programs do not honor the sale of second-hand medicine, so Aramalla should not have received any money from them at all.
A resident of Port Washington, New York, Aramalla is now facing charges of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud, and a charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering. The fraud charges carry a maximum sentence of 20 years, while the latter carries the same maximum penalty.
Gurbaksh Chahal
San Francisco entrepreneur and millionaire Gurbaksh Chahal was arrested and charged with 47domestic violence counts in August, accused of beating his girlfriend at his penthouse home.
Chahal’s girlfriend alleged that he repeatedly assaulted her at his home in Rincon Hill. He is alleged to have hit and kicked her 117 times over half-an-hour. Also, one of the deadly weapons he used is listed in the criminal complaint as a pillow. The violence stemmed from Chahal learning that the girlfriend had gone to Las Vegas with another man and cheated on him. According to reports, Chahal had used violence against her last month too, on July 4th.
Chahal was released on $1 million bail, increased substantially from its initial amount of $125,000, and has had his passport confiscated by the courts. He pleaded “not guilty” to the charges and is currently awaiting trial.
Amandeep Singh Dhami
Amandeep Singh Dhami was extradited to the US from India in early December, discovered there five years after his alleged role in the slaying of a young man outside of a California gurudwara in 2008.
Dhami, along with Gurpreet Singh Gosal, is accused of being behind the slaying of 26 year-old Parmjit Pamma Singh. The shooting occurred outside the Bradshaw Gurudwara in Sacramento, California, after a Sikh sports festival which was being held there. He was taken into custody by police in Jalandhar, Punjab, where he has been living under the false name of Jujhar Singh. Punjab police had arrested him for his involvement in a local crime, possibly involving drugs, when they received information from the FBI that they may have arrested a fugitive. The FBI and local police force determined that the arrested man was, in fact, Dhami, and set up the extradition.
Dhami is now facing charges for the murder of Parmjit Pamma Singh, the attempted murder of Shaib Jeet Singh, and numerous other charges for fleeing the scene of a murder, avoiding arrest, and other crimes.
Annie Dookhan
Annie Dookhan – a former chemist and drug analyst who conducted lab work for criminal investigations in the state of Massachusetts – was sentenced to three-to-five years behind bars for providing faulty lab work to state litigators that may have led to thousands of false convictions. In addition to her jail term, Dookhan has been given two years’ probation, part of which will involve her undergoing psychiatric treatment.
Dookhan was charged with 27 criminal counts for her malfeasance, including filing false reports, tampering with evidence, and misleading investigators. She confessed her guilt in August, one year after prosecutors uncovered evidence of her falsifying drug tests so that she would look like a better, more productive employee in the eyes of her bosses at the William A. Hinton State Laboratory Institute, in Jamaica Plain, MA.
Her phony evidence to the courts is now estimated to have affected an astonishing 40,000 individual criminal cases throughout the state. By this past August, roughly 600 convicts had either been released on bail or had their convictions temporarily nullified until a new trial could be undertaken, as a direct consequence of Dookhan’s actions. And as of earlier this month, Massachusetts courts have held nearly 3,000 hearings from defendants who have requested release from jail and their records expunged due to Dookhan’s involvement with their cases.
Jojo John
Jojo K. John is a former boat operator who pleaded not guilty to 18 criminal counts for the deaths of a bride and best man this past summer. John was in command of a speedboat that had been commandeered by Brian Bond on July 26 – just days before Bond’s wedding to Lindsay Stewart – when it hit a construction barge in the Hudson River, right by the Tappan Zee Bridge. Stewart, as well as Bond’s best man Mark Lennon, were thrown from the barge and died.
John has also been sued for civil damages by the groom of the deceased woman. That case, as well as several other lawsuits by the survivors against construction companies whose equipment may have been partially responsible for the tragic accident, are still pending.
John’s attorney, David Narain, has maintained his client’s innocence throughout the legal proceedings, saying that he has found multiple witnesses who attest that alcohol and drug-related impairment had nothing to do with the accident and that, in fact, it was caused by poor lighting conditions on the construction barges.
John is currently out on $25,000 bail. If he is found guilty of the criminal charges, he faces a sentence of 15 years in prison.
Girishcha Patel
Girishcha Patel was arrested in October for allegedly embezzling more than $85,000 from a Gujarati organization, and was indicted and formally charged for stealing exactly $85,844.
Patel, a 59 year-old resident of Franklin Township, New Jersey, was the treasurer of the Federation of Gujarati Associations in North America (FOGANA) from 2004 to 2012. From January of 2006 to March of 2012, he allegedly stole over $75,000 from the organization’s bank accounts, and continued to steal around $10,000 more for a year and a half after vacating the position.
Police caught wind of Patel’s activities when they were notified by FOGANA in January of this year. He was arrested on October 21 “without incident,” and was later let out of Somerset County Jail after posting a $75,000 bail. Patel was charged with second-degree theft.
Devindra and Dawatie Sewnarine
Husband and wife Devindra and Dawatie Sewnarine were fined and sentenced to probation for providing falsified income statements so that they would receive higher Medicaid benefits. They were ordered to pay back the full amount of benefit money they received as a result of their fraudulent income reports: $36,000, with each being responsible for $18,000. The husband was also given five years’ probation, while his wife was given a conditional discharge by the court.
The Sewnarines filed for Medicaid benefits in October of 2008, and cited on the paperwork that they only had a monthly income of $1,126. Investigators, however, uncovered that they actually earned over $200,000 from ten rental properties that they owned and managed in New York and New Jersey. Additionally, in the span of 2009-2012, the couple deposited more than $300,000 into 13 different bank accounts, and even purchased a $74,000 BMW car at one point.
Both husband and wife were arrested and charged with three criminal counts: third-degree grand larceny, third-degree welfare fraud, and first-degree “offering a false instrument for filing.” On October 25, 2013, they were convicted on all counts by a jury.
Balwinder Singh
Thirty-nine year-old Balwinder Singh was charged on December 18th, for his involvement with the terrorist groups Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) and Khalistan Zindabad Force (KZF). Both are extremist groups that aim to create an independent Sikh state, called Khalistan, in the Indian region of Punjab.
Singh now faces several charges: two counts of using a fraudulent immigration document, one count of making false statements on an immigration document, one count of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim persons in a foreign country, one count of illegally producing a false identification document, and one count of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists — that could land in prison for the rest of his life and levy a stiff $250,000 fine on him.
Gurmail Singh
Gurmail Singh was convicted of defrauding the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of a large sum of unpaid taxes.
Singh, owner of the Fancy and Vicky Construction Company, Inc. in Richmond Hill, New York, admitted to hiding information about cashed checks from the people doing his federal tax returns. Between 2006 and 2008, Singh cashed checks reportedly worth a total of nearly $2.9 million. By not including the checks in his tax statements – which are required to list total gross income for the year – Singh admitted to costing the IRS between $400,000 and $1,000,000.
He faces the maximum penalty of up to three years in prison, with an additional fine of $250,000. His sentencing is scheduled to occur on January 6th, 2014.
Jaspal Singh, Lakhvir Pawar, and Kulwinder Saroya
Jaspal Singh, Lakhvir Pawar, and Kulwinder Saroya were arrested in October for running motels that acted as festering grounds for all sorts of illegal activity.
Between July 1, 2012 and June 20, 2013, there were reportedly 223 calls complaining about illicit activities happening at the motels in question. This past August, an army of federal agents and cops raided the three Tukwila-area motels owned by the men, under suspicion that they were being used as grounds for drug deals and prostitution. Court documents listed the motels as being the scenes of numerous drug deals (normally involving crack cocaine), solicitation complaints, sexual assaults, and rapes.
The three confessed their guilt as part of a plea deal, which requires Singh and Saroya to give up over $265,000 that the US Attorney’s Office seized from their homes and bank accounts, two motels owned by the three men, a 4,480 square-foot home in SeaTac (Seattle-Tacoma, Washington, where the three men are from), and a 2007 Mercedes-Benz car. Pawar, on the other hand, will lose his share in the remaining hotel as well as $90,000 that were seized from him.