“He’s (Ranj Cheema) like the grandfather of gangsters, him and Gisby,” Former Vancouver police gang squad Det. Doug Spencer told CBC News Wednesday. “To live that long, it’s almost unheard of. The clock is ticking on all these guys.”
By R. Paul Dhillon With News Files
SOUTH VANCOUVER – Ranjit Singh “Ranj” Cheema was one of the original Indo-Canadian gangsters from South Vancouver – some might even say the Godfather as he is considered to have started the racket that eventually brought in the likes of Bindy Johal, Jimmy Dosanjh, Raj Benji, Peter Gill, Paul Cheema, Sun News Lal and down the line the Buttar brothers and countless other young Indo-Canadians who went down in a hail of bullets that has left the lower mainland riddled with bodies of over 100 young Indo-Canadian men killed in this brutal underworld of supposed easy money, power and sex.
One is reminded of a line from the NWA’s classic rap track Straight Out of Compton and which has become a “motto” for gangsters -“Life ain’t nothing but bitches and money”!
That is until you are staring down a barrel of a gun and those bullets are coming straight at you as they did for the notorious Cheema, who was gunned down in front of his parents’ South Vancouver home Wednesday morning.
It was the same old story told countless other times as described by neighbour Jimmy Sanghara to the Province newspaper that he heard six or seven shots just before 10 a.m.
“There was blood everywhere. When I got there he was dead, slumped in the seat of the vehicle.,” Sanghara said.
Sanghara said it appeared Cheema was attempting to get out of the SUV when he was shot.
Another neighbour Adil Bhama, 17, told The Province he came out of his house after hearing the shots.
The teen then walked down 61st Avenue toward where the noise came from and spotted a body lying in the middle of the road.
Vancouver Police launched an intensive search for a suspect vehicle, according to Const. Jana McGuinness, but no description has been released of the vehicle.
The shooting comes days after police issued a public warning about the possibility of escalating gang violence. Police feared retaliation after another veteran B.C. drug trafficker, Thomas Gisby, 50, was gunned down Saturday morning in Mexico.
An attempt was made to kill Cheema in 1995, when he was shot five times in the chest and abdomen outside a Vancouver karaoke bar. He was in a coma for six weeks after the shooting but apparently survived because of vast amount of steroids in his system.
Cheema’s old associates in the Indo-Canadian underworld including Bindy Johal were all killed, with Johal executed in 1998, Mike Brar in 2000 and Robbie Kandola in 2002.
Former Vancouver police gang squad Det. Doug Spencer dealt with Cheema several times and said Cheema, at age 44, outlived many of his contemporaries.
“He’s like the grandfather of gangsters, him and Gisby,” Spencer told CBC News Wednesday. “To live that long, it’s almost unheard of. The clock is ticking on all these guys.”
The word in the Indo-Canadian gang circles was that long-out-of-the-loop Cheema, who was released from a prison in California in January after serving five years for his role in a major drug-smuggling operation, was trying to get out of the scene after taking care of loose ends and collecting what was still owing to him before he was extradited to the US.
But according to police and media reports – Cheema was trying to get back into the thick of things and let the existing players know that he was still here and looking to reclaim what was his before his prison stint.
Cheema had been trying to muscle his way back into the lucrative B.C. drug trade before he was gunned down Wednesday, according to Vancouver Sun’s story on Thursday.
In the process, Cheema disrespected some of his former underlings who have moved up in the business since the 43-year-old went to jail.Some close to Cheema, as well as police sources, believe recent disputes with old associates could have led to the gangland execution, the Sun wrote.
“He was trying to step into his old role,” one friend said. “He didn’t realize that things have changed.”
Longtime Vancouver gang cop Doug Spencer, now with the B.C. Transit Police, said Cheema “has been talking real loud since he got back.”
“Maybe he was trying to re-establish his drug lines,” Spencer said.
Cheema, who in 2008 pleaded guilty to a role in an international heroin and cocaine smuggling ring, had a two-decade career in organized crime in Vancouver before going to prison down south.
He knew — or had done business with — most of the major players in the local drug trade, including Thomas Gisby, who was gunned down in Mexico on Saturday, and Billy Woo, murdered and dumped near Squamish last fall.
Cheema was also believed to have outstanding debts from before he went to prison that may have played a role in his demise. And he had an ego that was not helping his reintegration, the Sun wrote.
Cheema, while surprisingly remaining out of the media headlines until the Pakistan heroin deal snared him south of the border, had a long history of crime.
In 1993, Cheema was arrested after pulling a handgun during a dispute with bar staff outside the Wild Coyote Bar & Grill on Southwest Marine Drive. He fired several shots into the air and was sent to jail for six months in December 1996. He told a judge that steroids he was taking made him violent.
In August 1995, Cheema, then 27, was shot while leaving the Zodiac karaoke bar. He stumbled back into the South Granville bar with gunmen on his tail. At the time, a trial of six men accused in the executions of drug dealers Jim and Ron Dosanjh had just heard Cheema was involved in cocaine trafficking with gangsters Bindy Johal and Raj Benji. Benji and Johal, both on trial, were later acquitted in the killings.
Cheema’s notoriety peaked in 1998 when he was arrested as part of an international drug smuggling conspiracy to move 200 kilograms of heroin into North America from Pakistan. He was arrested in February 1998 after charges were laid by U.S. police, but released on a $1-million bail two months later. That set in motion 10 years of legal wrangling to prevent his extradition to California, during which he lived in south Vancouver, becoming active in the community and attending social functions.
One was a wedding reception at the Hellenic Community Centre in Kerrisdale — also attended by then-non-elected premier Ujjal Dosanhjh — where Cheema’s 23-year-old bodyguard, Mike Brar, was shot outside the reception. No charges were laid in connection with Brar’s death.
Former cop and now somewhat disgraced Vancouver South MLA Kash Heed, who spent 31 years with the VPD — told the media he spoke to Cheema many times while working in South Vancouver. Heed described the younger Cheema as an aggressive, steroid-using street thug. But he evolved, Heed said, into a more sophisticated organized criminal.
Heed said police need a new approach to tackling continuing gang violence.
“There is not one gang war right now. There are several gang wars,” he said.
He wants police to release more of their intelligence so the public can better protect itself.
“They have to start to share more information with the public,” Heed said. “They need to get out there and they need to expose these individuals.”
If police can post photos of suspected Stanley Cup rioters facing mischief charges online, they should be able to similarly disclose information about violent gangsters.
“We can plaster their pictures all over these websites, all over bus stop shelters for Stanley Cup rioters. But we can’t do it for these gang members?” Heed said. “So when we say the public should be concerned because of some sort of retaliatory action, we need to let the public know who these people are.”
LINK Editor R. Paul Dhillon has written a screenplay for a gang film called B. Town Boyz, which is based on Indo-Canadian gang landscape and is currently being developed MMM Films with support from Telefilm Canada.
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