For the third time this year, a Metro Vancouver gangster has been shot to death in Mexico.

Jodh Singh Manj, 31, was gunned down after leaving a gym in a commercial complex in the Mexico City neighbourhood of Santa Fe.

He was getting into a vehicle in the building’s parking lot when gunmen opened fire about 1:30 p.m. local time Wednesday.

Manj, who grew up on Vancouver’s south slope, is a member of the United Nations gang and had been spending long periods of time in Mexico for years.

Police sources say he maintained links with Mexican cartels to broker bulk cocaine shipments to Canada that would then be sold by the gang.

He was also a suspect in the 2012 murder in Port Moody of Independent Soldier gangster Randy Naicker, although Manj was never charged. Two others linked to the UN earlier pleaded guilty to having roles in the Naicker murder conspiracy.

Police also say Manj’s violent demise in Mexico is likely an indication that B.C.’s bloody gang war between the UN and the Wolf Pack gang coalition has spilled over into that country.

The Wolf Pack was formed in 2010 by some Hells Angels, some Independent Soldiers members and some Red Scorpion gangsters.

On Aug. 24, Wolf Pack associate and former Metro Vancouver resident Nabil Alkhalil was shot to death in a luxury car dealership in a wealthy suburb of Mexico City. His brother Robby remains in pretrial custody in B.C. charged with the 2012 murder of high-profile gangster Sandip Duhre in Vancouver’s Wall Centre.

And a week earlier, on Aug. 17, West Vancouver’s Guiseppe Bugge, who police describe as a Hells Angels associate, was fatally shot in a posh shopping centre in Guadalajara.

Manj’s murder could have been in retaliation for those of Alkhalil and Bugge, both described as “targets of the UN,” Postmedia sources said Thursday.

One high-profile Hells Angel was posting gleeful comments on his Instagram Wednesday believed to be referencing Manj’s murder.

Sgt. Brenda Winpenny, of the anti-gang Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, said Manj’s death shows that those caught in the violent gang lifestyle can’t escape it by fleeing Canada.

“There have been multiple murders of gang members, many of them high-profile, in Mexico over the years and recently,” Winpenny said Thursday. “Gang members who think they can hide out in foreign countries are naive to think they will be able to escape the ramifications of their negative decisions and actions — whether that’s from the police or from those who want them dead.”

VPD Supt. Mike Porteous said police have been aware of Jodh Manj for more than a decade.

He said he was “always in conflicts with other gang figures, involved in violence across Greater Vancouver, the south slope, drugs, most of the gamut of any kind of gang related crime.”

Richard Walker, a spokesman for Global Affairs Canada, said the department “is aware of the death of a Canadian citizen in Mexico. We offer our deepest condolences to the family and friends of the Canadian citizen.”

“Consular services are being provided to the family. Canadian consular officials are in contact with local authorities to gather additional information,” he said.

Until last year, Manj was facing charges of conspiracy to import and distribute methamphetamine, ecstasy and pseudoephedrine in Oregon, California, Washington and Canada.

The U.S. attorney in Portland alleged Manj had conspired with several others to smuggle ecstasy and pseudoephedrine from Canada into the U.S., then transport methamphetamine north to the Pacific Northwest and into B.C. from 2008 to 2010.

In 2009, Manj was intercepted by U.S. agents talking on the phone to the head of a drug trafficking organization about selling him 15,000 ecstasy pills.

According to U.S. court documents, the charges against Manj were dismissed in February 2017 because the “defendant has not been apprehended, his whereabouts are unknown, and it would be difficult to locate the witnesses and exhibits necessary for successful prosecution of this case.”

Manj had convictions in B.C. for uttering threats and violating court-ordered conditions.

He was one of several gangsters stopped by police in Vancouver’s Kensington Park in October 2010 after the funeral for slain gangster Gurmit Dhak — considered one of the major flashpoints in years of gun violence.

Police believed Manj and the others were meeting to plot a hit on a rival Wolf Pack member for Dhak’s murder. Two of Manj’s associates carried guns and were later charged and convicted.

In September, a Vancouver provincial Ccourt judge stayed a charge against Manj’s older brother Aman in connection with an assault at a Vancouver nightclub on New Year’s Eve in 2015 due to the length of time the case took to get to trial.

Aman Manj was also identified in a 2012 trial as having been hunted by gang rivals who were later caught with firearms in their vehicles and arrested by Vancouver Police.

kbolan@postmedia.com

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