Indian-origin drug smugglers using frozen chicken as cover busted in UK

LONDON: A gang involving Indian-origin men that used frozen chicken consignments among their many covers to smuggle drugs has been busted by UK police and now its members face prison sentences ranging between 16 and two years each.

Maninder Dosanjh, 39, was jailed for 16 years and eight months, and Amandeep Rishi, 42, faces imprisonment for 11 years and two months for their role in the conspiracy to supply class A banned drugs and money laundering at Birmingham Crown Court last week.

West Midlands Police told the court they seized 400kg of "high-purity" cocaine as well as GBP 1.6 million in illegal cash as investigators dismantled the wholesale supply chain, which saw the 10-strong gang transporting the drugs in pallets of raw chicken.

"This far-reaching investigation covered the importation, exportation and wholesale national supply of cocaine and money laundering,” said Detective Chief Inspector Pete Cooke from the West Midlands Police's Regional Organised Crime Unit (ROCU).

“We were able to expose the gangs' activities which were both sophisticated and on a commercial scale, with them using a network of highly trusted individuals and a fleet of vehicles with hidden compartments," he said.

"We believe they were responsible for importing hundreds of kilos of cocaine, estimated to be over a tonne, resulting in them making huge sums of cash, thought to be over GBP 10 million,” he added.

Some of the illegal cash recovered by West Midlands ROCU was found stashed in vehicle tyres and industrial machinery inside vans disguised as mechanical service vehicles. The police also recovered 225kg of cocaine destined for export to Australia that had been stored at a warehouse in Sutton Coldfield, in the West Midlands region of England.

“But all this enterprise was illegal and was putting large quantities of drugs, which we know destroy many lives and blight many communities, onto the streets both here in the UK and overseas. Our teams were able to trace the activity, identify the criminals and ultimately put them behind bars with considerable jail terms," DCI Cooke added.

The gang communicated with each other using the Encrochat platform, an encrypted messaging app that criminals believed couldn't be accessed by law enforcers. It has since been shut down by investigators as part of a major UK-wide operation.

These messages discussed the logistics, management and delivery of up to a tonne of cocaine and large amounts of criminal cash being collected or delivered in the UK.

Dosanjh and Rishi were the first to be arrested with over 150kg of cocaine hidden in frozen chicken produce when police officers in Birmingham stopped the van they were in coming back from docks in Essex. Others in the gang were arrested after one of the gangsters collected wheels and tyres in the West Midlands before driving to London, where they were passed to another gangster in a residential street. When the tyres were cut open, they were found to contain around GBP 500,000 in cash. On another occasion, just over GBP 1 million cash was recovered from a concealed compartment of an air compressor in another of the gang's vans stopped by officers.

The 10 men, who lived in Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Sandwell, Walsall, South Staffordshire and London, were all arrested within 10 days in July 2020. They went on to plead guilty to drug smuggling offences between March and August 2020, with their sentencing taking place on August 20 this year.