January 10, 2026 – SACRAMENTO, CA – Shaminderjit Singh Sandhu, 52, of Tracy, was sentenced on Thursday to seven and a half years in prison for conspiring to use interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire, U.S. Attorney Eric Grant announced.

Image by Ray Shrewsberry • Ray_Shrewsberry from Pixabay 

According to court documents, Sandhu conspired with Jagninder Singh Boparai, 49, of Manteca; and Ramesh Kumar Birla Jr., 47, of Dublin, to murder a victim identified as Victim 2. In February 2023, Boparai met with a person he believed to be a hitman at a Starbucks in Manteca. Unbeknownst to Boparai and his co-defendants, throughout their interactions, the hitman was in fact a confidential informant working for the FBI. Boparai told the supposed hitman that the first job involved the assault of another man with whom the defendants were feuding. Once the hitman proved his trustworthiness, he would be given another job.

Related: Tracy Man Pleads Guilty for His Role in Murder-for-Hire Plot in San Joaquin County

San Joaquin County Man Pleads Guilty for his Role in Murder-for-Hire Plot

The following day, Boparai met the confidential informant again and offered to pay $6,000 for the assault. In March 2023, in the presence of Birla and another individual, Boparai met with the confidential informant, and Boparai gave the confidential informant $1,000 as a down payment for the assault. After more time had passed, the confidential informant showed Boparai a staged photo of the supposed assault victim lying on the ground covered in bruises, dirt, and blood to show the assault had occurred. Boparai said he liked the photo and told the confidential informant that he had two other “jobs,” one of which involved robbing a business, and the other involved making a person “disappear.”

Then, in March 2023, Boparai met with the confidential informant to pay the confidential informant $10,000 as a down payment for the murder for hire job. Sandhu provided the second victim’s address, and Boparai instructed the confidential informant that the victim must disappear without any evidence remaining. On March 24, 2023, Sandhu and Birla met with the confidential informant in a parking lot in Manteca. Sandhu and Birla claimed that Boparai was out of town, but Boparai was observed remaining in a car in the same parking lot. Sandhu and Birla instructed the confidential informant to kill the victim and take his remains to Mexico in a suitcase. All three defendants were arrested on March 31, 2023, and are currently in federal custody.

This case is the product of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with assistance from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the California Highway Patrol, the Ceres Police Department, the Dublin Police Department, Homeland Security Investigations, the Lathrop Police Department, the Modesto Police Department, the San Joaquin County Probation Office, the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office, the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Bureau of Investigation, the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Office, the Stockton Police Department, the Tracy Police Department, the Turlock Police Department, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Adrian T. Kinsella and Kevin Khasigian are prosecuting the case.

Boparai pleaded guilty to the same charge on January 23, 2025. On August 14, 2025, U.S. District Judge Daniel J. Calabretta sentenced him to nine years in prison.

Birla is scheduled for a further status conference on February 12, 2026.  If convicted, he faces a maximum statutory penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The actual sentence, however, will be determined at the discretion of the court after consideration of any applicable statutory factors and the federal Sentencing Guidelines, which take into account a number of variables. The charges against Birla are only allegations; he is presumed innocent until and unless he is proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Source: DOJ Release