Attempted hit on Toronto jail guard tied to web of local crimes, documents allege | Globalnews.ca

Attempted hit on Toronto jail guard tied to web of local crimes, documents allege  | Globalnews.ca

This piece is one part of continuing coverage by Global News examining alleged Toronto police corruption. More stories about Project South are available here.

A web of Toronto’s highest-profile crime stories — from allegedly corrupt cops to major drug dealers and potential gun-for-hire networks – may all weave into Project South, according to detailed investigative theories from York Regional Police detectives based on call intercepts, listening devices and searches.

New documents chronicling evidence gathered by investigators in the massive police corruption probe lay out alleged relationships between key players in overlapping criminal investigations that stretch from Toronto to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States.

While the central thesis of the documents was broadly made public when police announced arrests in Project South back in February, the fresh pages offer a new level of detail.

Story continues below advertisement

They are being made public after a consortium of media companies, including Global News, requested that the court unseal hundreds of pages of evidence.

The Information to Obtain, or ITO, is written testimony that police must provide to a judge in order to obtain a search warrant. The contents are based solely on preliminary police observations.

Major parts of the documents remain under a publication ban that the media consortium is contesting.

The now partially unsealed ITO was put together by York Regional Police in February 2026 as detectives sought permission from a judge to carry out a slew of nighttime raids, searching vehicles and homes for electronic devices, cash and other documents.

They lay out how officers believe a plan to “cause serious harm or death” to a Toronto jail worker has links to former Olympian and alleged drug lord Ryan Wedding, potential gun-for-hire networks and allegedly corrupt officers with the Toronto Police Service.

None of the links drawn in the police documents has been proven. They are based on evidence, like phone intercepts or recording devices, which have not yet been heard and assessed by a judge or jury.

Project South, the title for a massive corruption investigation led by York Regional Police, started after officers began looking into a shooting at the suburban home of an Ontario correctional worker.

Story continues below advertisement

Speaking at a news conference in February, Deputy Chief Ryan Hogan said the probe began in June 2025 when investigators allege a conspiracy unfolded to murder a man who was working at an Ontario correctional institution.

Get breaking Canada news delivered to your inbox as it happens so you won't miss a trending story.

Get breaking National news

Get breaking Canada news delivered to your inbox as it happens so you won’t miss a trending story.

Hogan said over a 36-hour period, several suspects went to the man’s home in York Region, at least three times, “we allege for the purpose of murdering him.” He said video surveillance shows masked and armed suspects went to the home, and at one point, rammed a police cruiser that was in the driveway.

Police concluded the incident had been targeting a jail worker at the Toronto South Detention Centre.

According to the documents, the guard told police he was unpopular with “most inmates” at the jail where he worked. He listed several people he thought could have a reason to harm him, including a man named Gurpreet Singh, who was being held at the facility awaiting extradition to the United States.

Singh was arrested on Oct. 16, 2024, and is wanted by both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration in the United States.

According to the ITO, Singh’s extradition order stems from allegations of “conspiracy and drug-related charges arising from an FBI and DEA investigation into Ryan Wedding’s international drug-trafficking.”

U.S. authorities have described Wedding as a “modern-day Pablo Escobar,” allegedly responsible for a trafficking empire netting more than $1 billion per year in illegal drug proceeds.

Story continues below advertisement

The police documents alleged Singh “had motive” to harm the correctional worker and “has connections” to three people who were allegedly involved in the attempted hit.

Singh has not been charged in Project South, and none of the allegations in the documents have been tested in court.

“The fact that Mr. Singh has not been charged with any offence in Canada more than four months after the execution of the warrants is the clearest response to the allegations contained in the information to obtain,” Brian Greenspan, Singh’s lawyer, wrote in an email to Global News.

Exactly how investigators allege Singh may be linked to some of the people charged under Project South remains under a publication ban.

Police officers and jail guard

As police looked into the alleged hit at the jail guard’s home in June last year, they started to piece together evidence.

Story continues below advertisement

The first clue came when investigators searched the jail guard’s licence plate to gather information about the victim for their probe.

According to the documents, a Ministry of Transportation database showed a Toronto police officer charged in Project South had searched the same licence plate at the end of the previous month.

The documents suggest Project South began to focus its attention on Singh as it developed, and how he could be related to the events in York Region.

Investigators started to look at another jail guard, Nishwant Dosanjh, who they believed had a relationship with Singh.

Police alleged she took a photograph of her colleague’s license plate in the correctional facility parking lot.

They theorized she then passed the image to Singh.

“The relationship between Dosanjh and Singh demonstrates both the opportunity and motive to facilitate access to sensitive information and contraband,” the ITO claimed.

“Subsequent investigative findings support that the licence plate information was disseminated through Singh’s associates, ultimately resulting in an unlawful database query,” the documents allege.

Dosanjh’s lawyer said her client “denies any allegations of criminal or professional misconduct and adamantly maintains her complete innocence.”

She added that Dosanh “co-operated fully” with the police investigation and was on paid leave since February when her lawyer said she made allegations against a colleague.

Story continues below advertisement

“Ms. Dosanjh was identified as a person of interest in the Project South investigation. She has cooperated fully with investigators, including by providing investigators with unfettered access to the contents of a cellular phone that was seized from her residence,” the statement continued.

“Ms. Dosanjh has not been charged criminally, and there is no indication criminal charges will ever be laid.”

The documents include a few scant references to a potential, alleged gun-for-hire network that may somehow be connected to Project South.

They include details of how one person charged with conspiracy to commit murder as part of Project South was allegedly involved in a “crime vehicle” text conversation, as well as a  “discussion about assembling a team for a job and firearms.”

The conversations and other details, which also allegedly involved the use of code names, are all covered by a publication ban.

Story continues below advertisement

Armed groups using encrypted messaging apps to organize criminal acts and get paid for them is a phenomenon Toronto police recently worried was on the rise in the city.

This year, Toronto police have alleged Signal is being used to order and organize shootings like one at the United States Consulate in March, along with others involving the waste collection company GFL or synagogues in Toronto.

“What we are dealing with in this case and in other unrelated incidents, including shootings at synagogues in Jewish schools, is a recurring and similar modus operandi: that is, criminals for hire,” Toronto police chief Myron Demkiw explained in June, after making arrests related to the United States Consulate shooting.

“Through encrypted messaging apps, young people are hired to carry out attacks against various targets. And in order to get paid, they’re required to film their attacks.”

The Project South records do not make any link between those shootings and their investigation, but appear to describe a similar setup.

— with files from The Canadian Press

Scroll to Top