Surrey man says shootings at his businesses connected to ongoing extortion attempts

CBC News

· Posted: Jun 12, 2025 9:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: June 12

A Surrey, B.C., man says 2 caller shootings astatine his businesses are connected to ongoing extortion attempts targeting the South Asian community.

Satish Kumar, the president of the city's Lakshmi Narayan Mandir temple, said he received video voicemails on May 28 from numbers listed arsenic being from Italy and New Zealand that demanded $2 million.

He said helium refused to wage and reported it to constabulary astatine the time, but officials took nary action.

In the aboriginal hours of June 7, shots were fired astatine the banquet hallway helium owns, helium said.

Shots were fired, helium said, at another concern he's connected to, Hub Insurance, on Tuesday.

No 1 was injured successful the shootings astatine the businesses.

He said he's holding a nationalist forum connected Sunday, and announcing a $100,000 reward to promote the assemblage to help bring an extremity to the extortion and violence.

"I'm requesting the assemblage [to] travel forward," helium said. "Don't beryllium frightened of these guys, right? They don't privation to termination you. They privation lone wealth from you guys."

Kumar said that if community members come together, they tin help find the shooters who unrecorded successful Metro Vancouver as good arsenic the extortionists.

Staff Sgt. Lindsey Houghton, a spokesperson for the Surrey Police Service, said investigators hadn't yet connected the shootings to extortion.

"I would impulse caution .... constabulary can't leap to conclusions and instantly spell from A to Z and marque a connection," helium told CBC News. "The grounds has to usher america successful each lawsuit that we investigate."

An ongoing spate of extortion attempts targeting South Asian concern owners led the RCMP to form a nationalist task unit to woody with the issue, which has besides been reported successful Alberta and the Greater Toronto Area.

Kumar said his son's Surrey location was the people of a December 2023 shooting, and he's received nary updates from constabulary connected the case.

Houghton said it was acold excessively aboriginal for constabulary to link that shooting and the 2 that occurred implicit the past week.

"We can't instantly link an incidental that happened implicit the play with thing that happened 2 years ago," helium said.

Kumar said he's received enactment from section leaders, similar Surrey Newton MP Sukh Dhaliwal and Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke, and he's asking constabulary to be his forum connected Sunday to supply answers connected however concern owners are being protected.

Attorney wide encourages reporting

Steve Kooner, a B.C. Conservative MLA and Opposition professional for the lawyer general's office, said the members of the South Asian assemblage are fearful for their lives amid the spate of extortion attempts.

He said the state has failed to respond aft MLAs attended different assemblage forum connected the contented past year, and a deficiency of spot successful authorities is holding radical backmost from going nationalist with their fears.

"There needs to beryllium an unfastened enactment of communication, and that's done done trust-building, and the authorities could instrumentality an progressive relation successful that," helium said.

WATCH | Forum held implicit extortion attempts: 

Kooner further called connected the state to acceptable up a multilingual anonymous hotline to encourage community members to study immoderate extortion attempts.

In response, B.C. Attorney General Niki Sharma told CBC News that residents can already call local constabulary and enactment anonymous, and she wants to promote radical to usage low-barrier ways to study extortion attempts.

Sharma said authorities need as galore radical arsenic imaginable to travel forward, and portion she understood nationalist vexation implicit the deficiency of updates connected cases, determination are teams of radical moving connected the issue.

"I'm a portion of the South Asian assemblage successful B.C., and their issues are taken conscionable arsenic seriously," she said. 

"And I cognize this is simply a analyzable matter, fixed the cross-jurisdictional quality and the mode it's showing up, but we person the resources successful spot and we request to support astatine it."

WATCH | Shootings linked to extortion: