There may be more Gujaratis who perished in the St Lawrence at the Quebec–New York border. Three more Gujaratis from Mehsana have been reported missing since the tragedy, and it has been confirmed that four of the eight whose remains were found in the river belonged to a Gujarati family.
The Canadian Coast Guard and the police recovered the eight bodies on March 30. The Gujaratis were identified as Pravin Chaudhary, 50, his wife Daksha 45 and his two children Vidhi, 24, and Mitkumar, 20, from Manekpur-Dabhla village of Vijapur taluka in Mehsana.
According to sources, the Chaudharys were joined by three members of another Gujarati family, including a man and his wife, both in their 30s, and their four-year-old child.
The St. Lawrence case involves human smugglers who, according to police sources, were part of the same network as those responsible for the Dingucha tragedy, where four of a family froze to their death while trying to enter the US illegally through the Canada border last January as well as the St Regis case in which six illegal immigrants from Gujarat were rescued from drowning in the river during an unlawful crossing last April.
Jasubhai Chaudhary, a resident of Mehsana’s Manekpur village, said that his brother, sister-in-law and their two children had gone to Canada two months earlier on visitor visas. He said that after he heard about Indians being among those who died along the United States-Canada border, he tried to contact his brother but failed.
He said that his suspicion was confirmed after he found that his family members’ names were among the identities of the victims circulating on Whatsapp groups of his other relatives settled in Canada.