The Approach

Criminal defence is not theatre. It is the slow, deliberate work of holding the state to its burden — proof beyond a reasonable doubt — and of ensuring that a single accusation does not become a verdict before a court has heard the whole of a person’s story.

Alex Gangatharan approaches every file the same way: quietly, and from the beginning. Before strategy comes listening. A defence is built from the details a client trusts you with at three in the morning, from the page of disclosure the Crown nearly missed, and from the silence between questions that lets a witness contradict themselves. Nothing is rehearsed; everything is prepared.

The practice covers the full range of criminal matters — from administration-of-justice breaches and impaired driving to the most serious homicides and sexual offences. He appears at every stage: bail, preliminary inquiry, trial, and sentence. He has argued cases grounded in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and has written on the limits of criminal law where it touches expression, autonomy, and human dignity.

The principle that guides the work is simple: the accused is not the offence. A charge describes an allegation, not a person. The role of defence counsel is to protect the individual against the weight of the state — to test the evidence, to expose its weaknesses, and to insist, always, on a fair process. That is the whole of the work, and it is enough.