An Indian-origin youth was among three people killed on New Year's day in a gang war in Canada's Calgary city that has a large Indian population.
An Indian-origin youth was among three people killed on New Year's day in a gang war in Canada's Calgary city that has a large Indian population.
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The shooting was the result of an ongoing war between two drug gangs - the Fresh Off the Boat (FOB) gang and the FOB Killers gang - which has claimed over two dozen lives since 2002 in the city.
One of the three victims was identified as 22-year-old Sanjeev Mann of the FOB Killers gang.
Police said Mann had been involved with the gang since his school days when students formed the FOB gang to run a 'dial-a-dope' operation to deliver cocaine, marijuana and other drugs at people's doorstep after taking orders on cell phones.
Later, some students broke away from the FOB gang to form the FOB Killers gang, leading to open warfare between the two groups.
Mann has been a victim of the gang violence in the past. In 2007, he was shot and seriously wounded in front of his southeast Calgary home, a local newspaper reported.
He was arrested last year by police under an operation to crack a cocaine trafficking ring and charged with possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking, manufacturing a controlled substance and possession of proceeds of crime, Calgary Herald reported.
Though more than 100 Indian-origin youths have been killed in drug-related gang warfare in the Vancouver area since the mid-1990s, Calgary has not seen any Indian-origin person killed in drug-related violence till now.
"We are still a close-knit community and we don't have the kind of problems that Indian immigrants face in the Vancouver area. Our young men are not into this kind of thing. This is an odd case," 27-year-old Manmeet Bhullar, who was elected to the Alberta assembly last year, told IANS.
"But we are definitely seeing some negative influences, and Mann is the first such victim," he said.
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