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Brampton man charged with temple robberies in Canada
Durham police identified the accused as 41-year-old Jagdish Pandher of Brampton, and he is facing charges for numerous offences.
Canadian police has arrested one person in connection with a series of burglaries at temples in the province of Ontario in recent months.
In a release on Thursday, Durham Regional Police Service (DRPS) identified the person as 41-year-old Jagdish Pandher, a resident of the town of Brampton in the Greater Toronto Area or GTA. He is facing charges for numerous offences and is being held for a bail hearing.
Pandher was also involved in another series of burglaries targeting places of worship last year.
DRPS said a man was seen on security surveillance breaking into the Hindu temple on October 8 and taking a large quantity of cash from the donation boxes.
The man was seen on surveillance footage later that morning committing additional break-and-enters at Hindu temples in Pickering and Ajax.
Investigators linked the same suspect to numerous other break-and-enters at Hindu temples throughout the year. These break-and-enters occurred in Durham Region and around the GTA.
“Although these offences occurred at places of worship, they do not appear to be hate crimes or motivated by hate,” the release noted.
At least six Hindu temples were broken into in the province since this September.
The temples included the Devi Mandir in Pickering, Sankat Mochan Mandir in Ajax and the Hindu Mandir Durham in Oshawa.
The three temples in the GTA were the Chintpurni Temple in Brampton, which was targeted on September 9, Rameshwar Mandir in Caledon, robbed on September 18 and the Hindu Heritage Centre in Mississauga, on October 4.
These burglaries follow a spate of similar incidents in the GTA in late 2021 and into early last year. There were at least 18 such break-ins. Four persons were arrested in March 2022 in connection with the burglaries that had caused concern within the Indo-Canadian community.
On March 4, Peel Regional Police or PRP identified one of those arrested as Jagdish Pander. The others were Gursharnjeet Dhindsa, Parminder Gill and Gurdeep Pandher. While the majority of the places of worship robbed and vandalised were Hindu temples, they also included Jain temples and Sikh gurdwaras.
