Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\nMr. Singh has not been charged in connection with Project South. In a court appearance Wednesday related to the Wedding case, a lawyer for Mr. Singh said he was moved to Toronto South\u2019s special handling unit last Friday where he has had \u201cvery limited access to counsel and the outside world.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve made inquiries about his transfer to that unit, which have gone unanswered,\u201d Christopher Lutes, a lawyer for Mr. Singh, told the court. <\/p>\n
In an e-mailed statement, Ministry of the Solicitor-General spokesperson Brent Ross said he was unable to provide information on individual cases or matters that are before the courts. <\/p>\n
An independent review on inmate-on-staff violence conducted for the Ontario provincial government says detainees are sometimes placed in special handling areas because of \u201cbehavioural management\u201d issues, but does not describe specific grounds for this more restrictive form of detention.<\/p>\n
Mr. Singh has previously raised concerns about conditions at Toronto South. During a bail hearing in March, 2025, Mr. Singh told the court his personal belongings including \u201creligious books\u201d had been damaged during a search of his cell.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are regularly getting searched. They wake us up maybe 5 [or] 6 in the morning, take us to the scanners, strip search us,\u201d he told the court, according to an official audio recording of the proceedings.<\/p>\n
Mr. Singh said he had twice been denied access to his lawyers at the facility, and denied visits from friends and family on multiple occasions.<\/p>\n
Mr. Singh and his co-accused, Hardeep Ratte, conspired to help ship hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Southern California to Canada in long-haul semi-trucks, U.S. authorities say. The allegations have not been tested in court. <\/p>\n
Police have described Mr. Da Costa, the alleged drug trafficker charged in Project South and connected in court documents to Mr. Singh, as a \u201ckey figure\u201d in a Toronto-area criminal network with \u201csignificant international ties.\u201d<\/p>\n
Investigators say Mr. Da Costa worked closely with Toronto Police Constable Timothy Barnhardt, alleging the two men gave confidential information about the Toronto South corrections officer to hit men who targeted the officer in June of last year. The pair is also jointly charged with trafficking in stolen police uniforms, obstruction of justice and public mischief. <\/p>\n
Correctional officer safety has long been a point of contention between the Ontario government and the union representing prison staff.<\/p>\n
Six years before police allege the database breach led hitmen to a correctional officer\u2019s door, the Ontario government rejected a union proposal to make it impossible to search for jail staff\u2019s personal information in its licence-plate database.<\/p>\n
With a report from Molly Hayes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An alleged accomplice of accused cocaine kingpin Ryan Wedding has been moved to a special unit in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194291],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,3302,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-530364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-toronto","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}