British police have busted an Indian-origin gang that used frozen chicken as one of its many cover-ups for drug smuggling. Its members will now face jail terms ranging from 16 to two years.
Last week, Birmingham Crown Court sentenced Maninder Dosanjh, 39, to 16 years and eight months in prison, and Amandip Rishi, 42, to 11 years and two months in prison for their roles in a conspiracy to supply Class A prohibited drugs and money laundering.
West Midlands Police told the court they had seized 400kg of “high purity” cocaine as well as £1.6 million in illicit cash after investigators dismantled a wholesale supply chain which saw a 10-member gang transport the drugs in packets of raw chicken.
Detective Chief Inspector Pete Cooke, from West Midlands Police’s Regional Organised Crime Unit (ROCU), said: “This far-reaching investigation involved the importation, exportation and wholesale national supply of cocaine as well as money laundering.”
“We were able to unravel the activities of the gangs, which were sophisticated and commercial in nature, and were using a network of highly trusted individuals and a fleet of vehicles with hidden compartments,” he said.
He added: “We believe they were responsible for importing hundreds of kilos of cocaine, estimated at over a tonne, which resulted in them receiving a significant amount of cash, potentially in excess of GBP 10 million.”
Some of the illicit cash recovered by the West Midlands ROCU was hidden in vehicle tyres and industrial machinery inside vans disguised as mechanical service vehicles. Police also recovered 225kg of cocaine meant to be exported to Australia, which was stored at a warehouse in Sutton Coldfield in the West Midlands region of England.
“But this was all illegal and huge quantities of drugs were being brought onto the streets, which as we know ruins many people’s lives and harms many communities, both here in the UK and overseas. Our teams were able to detect the activity, identify the offenders and ultimately put them behind bars for lengthy prison terms,” DCI Cooke said.
The gang communicated with each other using the EncroChat platform, an encrypted messaging app which the criminals believed could not be accessed by law enforcement. Investigators have since shut it down as part of a major U.K.-wide operation.
These messages discussed the logistics, management and distribution of up to a tonne of cocaine and large amounts of criminal cash to be collected or distributed in the UK.
Dosanjh and Rishi were arrested with more than 150kg of cocaine hidden in frozen chicken products when police officers in Birmingham stopped the van in which they were returning from the docks in Essex. Other gang members were arrested when one gangster collected wheels and tyres in the West Midlands before driving to London, where they were handed over to another gangster in a residential street. When the tyres were cut, they were found to contain almost GBP 500,000 in cash. On another occasion, more than GBP 1 million in cash was recovered from a hidden compartment of an air compressor in another van belonging to the gang stopped by officers.
The 10 men, living in Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Sandwell, Walsall, South Staffordshire and London, were arrested over 10 days in July 2020. They pleaded guilty to drug trafficking offences between March and August 2020, and were sentenced on August 20 this year.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
