According to information posted by a family friend on a fundraising platform, more than 30 bullets were fired by unidentified gunmen when the family was preparing to go to sleep in their rented house in Caledon.

Ottawa: A Sikh family from India who was targeted last month in a shooting spree in the Canadian province of Ontario that killed one person was possibly a case of mistaken identity, provincial police have said. Officers from the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) and paramedics responded to reports of a shooting on Mayfield Road near Airport Road, along the Caledon-Brampton border, shortly before midnight on November 21.

Jagtar Singh, 57, was killed while his wife Harbhajan Kaur, 55, and their daughter were critically injured during a shooting. Officers from the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) and paramedics upon arrival found Jagtar Singh dead on the scene, and rushed Kaur and their daughter to hospital with life-threatening injuries, the Toronto Star newspaper reported on Monday.

While Kaur succumbed to her injuries in hospital, their daughter, yet to be identified by the police, continues to battle for life at a trauma centre in Toronto.

According to information posted by a family friend on a fundraising platform, more than 30 bullets were fired by unidentified gunmen when the family was preparing to go to sleep in their rented house in Caledon.

More than 20 bullets were pumped into the body of Kaur alone, damaging her stomach, uterus, intestine, leg, diaphragm, kidneys and lungs, Paramvir Singh wrote on GoFundMe platform.

Doctors told Paramvir that even if the daughter survives, she will not be able to recover for a very long period of time. They said she is “deeply traumatised and severely wounded, and has not spoken a word since the incident has happened”.

Officers are investigating “all aspects of this homicide, including whether or not the victims of this crime were intended targets or not”, OPP Detective Inspector Brian McDermott said.

“It is still too early to make any firm determinations on that aspect.” According to a source close to the victims who spoke on condition of anonymity, the family wants to make clear that they were not involved in anything that might have led to the November 20 shooting in the home they were renting.

Describing them as “innocent” and ordinary people, the source said the victims did not have any ties to criminal activity and had no connection to an illegal trucking operation at the same address, which had recently been shut down by the Town of Caledon.

Reportedly the man and his wife were visiting family from India when they were shot. The family believes the attackers who stormed into the home that night were looking for someone else. “They mistakenly shot this family thinking it was (that person’s) family,” they said.

Investigators have not said whether the shooting was linked to the business.

The source said the family was not connected to the business and was simply renting the upper part of the house. The basement unit was also being rented out. “This was a normal family,” a representative of Gurudwara Jot Parkash Sahib, a Sikh place of worship in Brampton, said days after the shooting.

“Everyone is shocked,” the Gurudwara representative added.