Goondagiri in Vancouver

Bollywood actor and producer Jagdarshan Samra was beaten up by five men at a soccer and kabaddi tournament at the Ross Street Sikh Temple in Vancouver. He was beaten so badly that he lost an eye.  The public beating was allegedly in retaliation for a lawsuit that Samra filed in this native state of Punjab against people who have illegally occupied a piece of land that Samra owns.  A few more details can be seen in this article in The Province.

Squatting is the most common form of land transfer in India – from urban slum dwellers taking over scraps of available land on sidewalks, by railway lines, or on marshland to relatives expropriating property put in their names by fathers, brothers, uncles, or cousins overseas.  All over India, you will see vacant lots with high fences – their sole occupant: the guard.  People would rather leave their property empty for 40 years than rent it out for fear that the renters would never relinquish the property.  After all, your only recourse is the courts, and that process, even if uncorrupted, can take decades to resolve and is rarely decided in the nonresident’s favor.  So, even “respectable” people resort to violence, or the threat of violence, to get a piece of property or to get it back.  The only surprise here is that that resolution process, accepted as the “norm” in India, has been transfered to Vancouver.  Why face the potential of time for a crime committed in Canada for a lawsuit whose jurisdiction is in India?  Does Samra not have any relatives left in Punjab to beat up?  Are the transgressor’s family members all in Vancouver too?  What is the price of a goonda in Vancouver?

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