India-born Steve Rai has been appointed the new deputy chief constable of Canada‘s Vancouver Police Department.

Vancouver Police chief Adam Palmer announced yesterday that Mr Rai has joined the department’s executive team as the new deputy.

Born in Punjab, Mr Rai has been serving the police department for the past 25 years. His brother Roger is also a police officer assigned to the Downtown Eastside.

Mr Rai drew on his cultural background to work extensively, at the street level, with the District’s South Asian community, using his skills in the Punjabi language.

He also completed assignments in the Vancouver Police Jail, as a Recruiting Unit investigator, and a secondment to the former Coordinated Law Enforcement Unit, according to a press release from Vancouver Police Department.

Vancouver, a bustling west coast seaport in British Columbia, has a large Indo-Canadian population and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had visited a temple and a gurdwara in the city during his visit to Canada in April this year.