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Gangster who sold ‘copious’ amounts of drugs to undercover officers convicted in Chilliwack court

Harniel Singh bragged about his life of crime, repeatedly sold cocaine and fentanyl to officers
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Harniel Singh was taken to an ambulance after he was caught by a police dog in Abbotsford and then arrested in April 2018. Kevin MacDonald photo

A young Abbotsford man who bragged about being a gangster was convicted in Chilliwack provincial court of trafficking in a controlled substance in Chilliwack, Langley and Richmond.

Harniel Singh ran a dial-a-dope line where he repeatedly sold cocaine, fentanyl and carfentanil to undercover RCMP drug officers back in 2017.

“He boasted about men working under him, he boasted about an $80,000 Mercedes Benz,” Judge Kimberley Arthur-Leung said in reading her decision.

“He provided copious amounts of controlled drugs and substances. Mr. Singh boasted about a life of crime and the glamour that came along with it.”

He also bragged about being the “boss” of the drug trafficking organization. Singh admitted to undercover offices to holding a gun to his father’s head at one time, and threatening his aunt.

Singh, who is now 25, was originally charged with 11 counts of trafficking in a controlled substance after instances in Chilliwack, Langley and Richmond in 2017.

He sold as much as 56 grams of cocaine in one instance, and 18 grams of fentanyl in another.

Arthur-Leung found reasonable doubt in two instances but she found him guilty of the other nine counts. The judge said she did not believe Singh’s testimony in his own defence, calling it “conflicting and inconsistent.”

Many of the counts were connected to a specific phone number that was a known drug line, and that phone was on him when he was arrested yet he testified that he couldn’t remember the number.

“I find it simply implausible and the testimony of Mr. Singh was fraught with inconsistency,” Arthur-Leung said.

Singh sat behind his lawyer in courtroom 205. He is a tall, thin young man. He is clean cut, wore sagging jeans, dress shoes and a black dress shirt and wore a blue medical mask.

Singh’s lawyer also made three applications claiming Charter breaches, all were dismissed by the judge. There was a significant amount of time between the criminal acts and charges being laid, but there is nothing in the law or the Charter that covers pre-charge delay. Once charged, however, the Jordan decision means provincial cases need to be resolved in 18 months, Supreme cases 30 months.

Judge Arthur-Leung also dismissed Singh’s claim of entrapment. She outlined the test for the definition of entrapment, and said the incidents did not involve police entrapment at all.

“Mr. Singh was not the target,” she said. “The phone number was the initial target of the investigation.”

She went further saying that quite the opposite of entrapment, he often made contact with an undercover officer and bragged about how he could get higher quality illicit drugs.

Singh was sentenced to just under nine months in 2019 after pleading guilty to a charge of possession for the purpose of trafficking in Abbotsford.

He faced those charges on April 5, 2018, less than two weeks after he had been arrested in the incident in Chilliwack court on Monday (June 6, 2022).

The case was put over to a future date for sentencing. His lawyer said he needed at least a month to prepare a psychological evaluation.

RELATED: Alleged gangster arrested for second time in less than two weeks

RELATED: Gang Busters: Abbotsford Police gang crime unit tackles the issues


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