Judge calls Okanagan fentanyl dealer a ‘parasite’

A judge called a West Kelowna fentanyl dealer a “parasite” who gave his customers the wherewithal to kill themselves while he enriched himself from the misery of others.

Justice Gary Weatherill pointed out Mandeep Pandher wasn’t an addict trying to support his own habit, but a pure profiteer.

Mandeep Pandher was caught by police with almost 100 baggies of various drugs on him, after Vernon RCMP spent two months surveilling him.

According to an April 22 BC Supreme Court decision, police watched Pandher regularly leave his West Kelowna home, pick up drugs at an apartment on Academy Way near the UBC Okanagan campus, which was used as a stash house, and head to Vernon to sell them.

After putting him under surveillance and tracking his cell phone, the 26-year-old was arrested and found to have 92 prepackaged amounts of fentanyl, crack cocaine, and cocaine on him.

Two others were also arrested. Prince Dhanoa later received a two-and-a-half-year jail sentence, and Maninder Kaur was deported.

The decision said Pandher came to Canada from India on a student visa and went to university in Ontario. However, somewhere along the way, he dropped out of university and made his way to the Okanagan. He breached the terms of his student visa, and a deportation order was issued.

Crown prosecutors argued he should do two and a half years in jail, saying he was more than a street-level dealer and at a level in the drug hierarchy where he was trusted with a key to the apartment. They also point out he isn’t a drug addict.