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But nearly seven months and at least three closed-door investigations later, no one has been held to account for an incident that Gahunia says left him depressed and ostracized.

“To me it seems like there’s a cover-up,” he says. “I can’t even walk in the community like I used to any more. It’s damaged my name, it’s damaged my father’s name. People think I’m a criminal and they don’t want anything to do with me.”

Former Brampton MP Kyle Seeback, who helped Gahunia with his campaign, said he considers the events an assault on the democratic system.

People think I’m a criminal and they don’t want anything to do with me

“If a police officer can access someone’s confidential police file for political purposes and there’s no consequence, what message does that send?” he asked. “This is extraordinarily serious.”

Answers to exactly who was behind the episode, though, may not be emerging any time soon.

In an email to Gahunia last month, an investigator with the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD) — which received his complaint in April — said she was still “scheduling and conducting interviews, as well as obtaining and reviewing materials.”

Ruby Chauhan, a spokeswoman for the oversight agency, said she can’t comment on specific cases, but said “OIPRD thoroughly investigates all retained complaints and endeavours to do this as expediently as possible.”

And yet the case may not be much of a mystery. Gahunia says a detective with Peel Regional Police, which finished its own investigation in May, told him he already knew which officer obtained the documents — leaving behind a digital fingerprint as he did so — and who mailed them out, but was not allowed to divulge the information.