Gurpreet Dhillon’s former accuser, who withdrew her sexual assault accusation, said she was coerced to make false allegations

The woman who three years ago withdrew sexual assault allegations against former Brampton councillor Gurpreet Dhillon, wrote in a letter the City has had since 2023 that she was coerced and coached to make the false accusation.

Dhillon sent a statement to The Pointer this week detailing the contents in the letter the woman wrote and signed in the fall of 2023, describing that she acknowledged she had been “coached and coerced into making false allegations” when she attended a Brampton trade mission to Turkey in 2019 that Dhillon also attended. 

In April of 2024 The Pointer obtained a memo from the City of Brampton’s head lawyer, Sameer Akhtar, informing council members that the woman had recanted her story, and that a letter from her withdrawing her allegations had been sent to City officials in 2023 along with a legal notice from Dhillon demanding public statements be made acknowledging the withdrawal of all allegations against him. 

He also demanded that a 2020 report by Brampton’s controversial integrity commissioner Muneeza Sheikh be permanently removed from the City website. In it, Sheikh claimed evidence that has since been withdrawn by the woman, proved Dhillon’s guilt, and she recommended the maximum penalty against the former councillor for violating the City’s Code of Conduct, the only set of rules a municipal integrity commissioner can use when making their non-judicial decisions, which are not legal rulings.

Dhillon has denied the allegations from the beginning and Peel Police had previously confirmed to The Pointer that no investigation was launched and charges were never pursued against Dhillon. He took legal action challenging Sheikh’s report and the way she conducted her investigation, but a court panel only ruled on her procedural errors, finding that though Sheikh did not follow rules regarding the complaint process Brampton’s integrity commissioner is supposed to follow, she was justified in moving forward with her investigation into the allegations. 

At the time, Dhillon released a public statement, following Sheikh’s report: “I maintain that the report was issued without jurisdiction and after an unfair process, which included a relationship between the Mayor and the Integrity Commissioner, and direct political interference by the Mayor and his staff. I will be exploring all my legal options.” 

Sheikh and Brown have been criticized for her hiring after he took office in 2018. While he was leader of the Ontario PC Party her husband had done work for Brown, the two had appeared on stage at an event together and he used an image of them together in his campaign material. When allegations of rape and attempted rape were made against Brown by two young women in 2018, Sheikh publicly spoke positively of his leadership in defence of the embattled politician. Brown denies the allegations. 

Sheikh and Mayor Brown did not respond to questions this week.

 Former councillor Gurpreet Dhillon confronts Mayor Patrick Brown during a contentious council meeting in the previous term.

(The Pointer files)

Legal experts have said Sheikh’s hiring as Brampton’s integrity commissioner—she had no municipal law experience and had never worked as an integrity commissioner—was a conflict of interest due to her connections to Brown. 

After a majority group of councillors opposed to the mayor, including Dhillon, fired her in 2022 and launched an external investigation into Sheikh’s hiring under Brown’s leadership, he later cancelled the investigations when councillor absences allowed him to call a last minute meeting where he had just enough votes to terminate the probe. He then had Sheikh rehired after the 2022 municipal election, when Dhillon was defeated and other council opponents did not return. 

Reporting by Global News last week supports the statements Dhillon made to The Pointer this week, detailing why the woman withdrew her allegations in her 2023 letter that was sent to the City of Brampton, which The Pointer reported on in 2024. The Pointer did not see the letter at the time; Global reported it has now seen the woman’s letter and published parts of its contents: “While I understand that my initial accusation may have brought attention to certain issues, I now realise that my accusations were misguided. I have come to realise that my memory of the events in question may have been clouded by a number of factors including emotional distress, misinformation and coercion from people who were not genuine with their intentions.” 

After the allegations were withdrawn and the letter from the woman was sent to Brampton officials, Dhillon threatened to file a $5 million lawsuit against the City of Brampton in March of 2024, due to the failure to take down Sheikh’s report from the City website and issue a public apology acknowledging the withdrawn allegations, which he had requested in October of 2023 when the woman’s letter was attached by Dhillon’s lawyer and sent to City officials.

Only after the legal threat by Dhillon in March of 2024, did the City’s head lawyer inform council members that the allegations had been withdrawn at least six months earlier. 

The City has refused to take down the report or issue a public apology to Dhillon who was stripped of his pay and suspended for 90 days by his council colleagues on Sheikh’s recommendation. City officials claim it is her report and Sheikh is the one responsible for any action to withdraw her original findings. 

Sheikh has not commented since 2024, when The Pointer first asked her about the withdrawn allegations. Once again, she did not respond to a request for comment this week.

In his statement to The Pointer this week, Dhillon accuses City officials of trying to discredit him, the latest example of “just how far corruption has spread in Brampton.”

He continues: “The City of Brampton refuses to correct the record despite undeniable proof that the claims made against me are untrue. The complainant acknowledged that they were coached and coerced into making false allegations, which they formally withdrew 3 years ago.”

Dhillon alleges Brampton officials are trying to further harm his reputation by refusing to take down the report and failing to acknowledge the withdrawal of allegations against him.

“City officials know the Integrity Commissioner's report continues to damage my reputation but they refuse to act. By evading their responsibility to expunge the defamatory report and clear my name, the City Solicitor, the Integrity Commissioner and City Council are intentionally misleading the people of Brampton.

“It is crystal clear that I am being targeted because they fear that I will expose their corruption—but I will not be silenced.”

Councillors were first made aware in April 2024 that the allegations against Dhillon had been withdrawn. 

“In late October 2023, my office received an email from a lawyer representing Mr. Dhillon, to which was attached a letter from… stating that she was ‘withdrawing’ sexual misconduct allegations she made against Mr. Dhillon in 2019-2020,” Akhtar, Brampton’s City Solicitor, wrote on April 4, 2024 in a message to all members of council. The name of the woman is included in Akhtar’s memo; The Pointer is not publishing it. 

The Pointer asked Akhtar at the time why he waited more than six months to inform council of the withdrawn allegations. He did not reply. Many of the same council members, including Mayor Patrick Brown, voted for the punishment against Dhillon, who later lost his seat in the 2022 municipal election after a widespread campaign against him that focussed on the since withdrawn sexual assault allegations. 

Brown had repeatedly attacked Dhillon publicly, accusing him of sexual assault ahead of the election.

When he held a press conference outside City Hall in the summer of 2022, shortly after he had been disqualified from the federal Conservative leadership race for allegedly breaking campaign financing rules (an RCMP investigation was launched and sources say it is still ongoing), Brown announced his bid for reelection and claimed the deeply entrenched division on council that led to sweeping investigations into allegations of widespread corruption (which he later cancelled) was because of the “Integrity Commissioner's finding of guilt over allegations of one councillor and sexual assault.”

He then repeatedly attacked Dhillon, accusing him of sexual assault ahead of the election that year. 

Dhillon pushed back.

“Sadly, I am not at all surprised by his desperate act to intimidate and deflect from his misconduct in Brampton,” Dhillon said in 2022. “The latest allegations of committing federal crimes as a CPC leadership candidate come as no surprise to Canadians who have seen this pattern of behaviour before. He lied to the Ontario integrity commissioner in 2018. He broke at least four rules regarding his income. And we found out he abused Ontario taxpayers as PC leader by running up expenses.”

He continued: “Brampton voters should ask him about the Globe and Mail article that highlighted concerns about his sexually inappropriate behaviour going back to his time as a Barrie area MP. That was years before it was reported that two more young women told their stories of the sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of Patrick Brown. CTV to this day stands by their reporting, in which they only changed the age of one woman. Brown lied to Canadians, suggesting the matter was settled. The allegations that led to Brown's disgraced fall from provincial politics still stand.” 

After Brown claimed the City was paying “hush money” to prevent the allegations against Dhillon from being discussed publicly, one of Brampton’s senior lawyers informed all council members, including Brown, that no such money had been paid to anyone. It did not stop Brown from making the allegation publicly.

“It is unconscionable that Patrick Brown would resort to this extreme political deception in order to orchestrate his coup of democracy and I can tell you that he will not be getting away with it,” Dhillon said after Brown’s claims about hush money.

Former Brampton councillor Gurpreet Dhillon was defeated in the 2022 municipal election. He is demanding the City of Brampton remove an integrity commissioner’s report about since withdrawn sexual assault allegations against him.

(The Pointer files)

Dhillon had previously questioned Brown’s conduct when Sheikh’s investigation report was released in 2020.

In it, she detailed Brown’s involvement with the woman who had accused Dhillon.

“My investigation was triggered in response to a phone call I received from Mayor Brown's office regarding purported misconduct by Councillor Dhillon in November 2019,” Sheikh wrote in her investigation report, which is still publicly available on the City of Brampton website. 

“To be specific, Mayor Brown informed me over a phone call on November 27, 2019 that the Complainant had reached out to him regarding an allegation of sexual assault and harassment. The allegation was that Councillor Dhillon had sexually assaulted/harassed the Complainant while they were in her hotel room in Turkey earlier that month. Mayor Brown did not state his intention to file a complaint against Councillor Dhillon, but only to provide me with a summary of what had taken place during his conversation with the Complainant.”

Sheikh continued, reporting that Brown stepped up his involvement in the matter: “Mayor Brown told me that he, Babu Nagalingam ("Mr. Nagalingam") (the Mayor's Chief of Staff), and Mr. Collins [Brown’s former director of communications] met with the Complainant at her hair salon in Brampton on November 20, 2019,” shortly after she had returned from the Turkey trade mission.

“Mayor Brown also contacted the Regional Chief of Police for Peel, Nish Duraiappah, to advise him both of the conversation that he had with the Complainant and of her intention to contact him regarding her allegations against Councillor Dhillon,” Sheikh wrote in her report.

The Pointer has asked Brown multiple times since Sheikh’s report was released in 2020, why he did not immediately tell the woman to contact the police herself, instead of inserting himself into the handling of allegations of sexual assault. He has not responded and has refused to explain why he met with the woman personally, face to face, which could be seen as interference.

Sheikh acknowledged it was Brown who triggered her investigation into Dhillon, not the woman: “While Mayor Brown did not file an official formal complaint against Councillor Dhillon, I exercised my own discretion to treat it as a complaint that required at least a preliminary investigation so that I could better understand what happened in Turkey.” 

She launched the investigation after speaking with Brown and despite no complaint from the woman. The City of Brampton’s rules were clear: the integrity commissioner can only initiate an investigation after a complainant has filed a formal Code of Conduct complaint themself to the integrity commissioner’s office. This was not done when Sheikh received the call from Brown and began probing the accusations which had been communicated by the mayor.

Dhillon highlighted this in his legal challenge at the time, but a panel of judges excused Sheikh, prompting Dhillon to allege in 2020 that Sheikh’s “report was issued…after an unfair process, which included a relationship between the Mayor and the Integrity Commissioner, and direct political interference by the Mayor…”. 

In 2023, Dhillon’s former accuser wrote in her letter that, “I now realise that my accusations were misguided…my memory of the events in question may have been clouded by…misinformation and coercion from people who were not genuine with their intentions.”

Dhillon was narrowly defeated in the 2022 election after a widespread public campaign by a community group that focussed on the since withdrawn allegations against him, and had connections to the man who beat Dhillon, Gurpartap Toor, who has been one of Brown’s supporters on council this term.

The City of Brampton was asked by The Pointer to comment on the request by Dhillon to remove all records of the case. No response was provided ahead of publication.

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