A man who killed a B.C. woman while street racing nearly nine years ago has been deported to India.
Sukhvir Singh Khosa was convicted in 2000, along with the Bahadur Singh Bhalru, in the death of Vancouver resident Irene Thorpe. The 51-year-old was killed when she was hit by a speeding car while out for an evening walk in south Vancouver.
Faith St. John of the Canada Border Services Agency confirms Khosa was removed from Canada Tuesday and is now in India.
Thorpe's sister says Khosa's deportation will finally bring some closure to her family.
"I didn't think we would ever find out," Nina Rivet said.
"I thought we were going to have to live with the unfinished business for the rest of our lives, and it has been -- and is -- completely emotionally exhausting. Devastating."
In March, the Supreme Court of Canada almost unanimously tossed out a Federal Court of Appeal ruling that called for reconsideration of a deportation order for Khosa.
Bhalru left in 2005 when the pair was given conditional sentences and the government moved to send them back to India.
But Khosa, who came to Canada in 1996 when he was 14, fought the order on humanitarian grounds.
The immigration appeal division refused to let him stay and he also lost an appeal for judicial review before the Federal Court of Appeal sided with him.
The case divided B.C. public opinion. Some argued Khosa, who was 20-years-old at the time, should be deported regardless, while others said it was too harsh a punishment for a crime committed when he was a young man.
He is now married with two Canadian-born children.
Nina Rivet remembers her sister, the oldest of 11 children, as someone who always lived life to the fullest.
"She loved cats and she came home every Sunday for supper," Rivet said.
"She has a daughter and now a grandchild and she would have been so proud of them. She was my best friend."
In the last two years, the Canada Border Services Agency has deported 600 people convicted of serious crimes from B.C. and Yukon alone.
