No jail time for paraplegic who conspired to have man killed
A blind and paralyzed former gangster has pleaded guilty and been sentenced for helping plot to kill a Surrey man.
Baljit (Bal) Buttar, 35, entered his plea last week (June 27) in B.C. Supreme Court. He was given a four-month conditional sentence and will not do jail time but continue to live in a long-term care facility. He will also be on probation for three years and has a lifetime ban on owning firearms.
Buttar was charged in 2007 with conspiracy to commit murder and counselling another person to commit an indictable offence, as was Surrey resident Meena Jouhal.
According to court documents, Jouhal and Buttar began planning the murder of the man, who cannot be identified, in July 2006. They tried to get another person to commit the murder.
The killing was never carried out.
Jouhal pleaded guilty last spring and was sentenced to seven years in prison.
Buttar, who was considered one of the most threatening men in Vancouver in the 1990s, has been confined to a wheelchair since he was shot twice in the head 10 years ago.
In the documentary "A Warrior's Religion," he told Surrey filmmaker Mani Amar he remembers a sound like a "wrestling bell," then waking up in darkness.
His criminal associates met similar fates.
"My whole crew vanished. In two years my whole crew (was) gone," Buttar said.
Buttar's mother once told a police officer that her three sons were "warriors." This was before one was murdered and one was crippled as a result of their gangland involvement.
- with files from Dan Ferguson
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