UK Court Sentences Drug Dealer to Almost Eight Years in Jail

A UK court has sentenced an Indian-origin drug dealer for nearly eight years for conspiracy to supply 10 kg of cocaine in London, PTI reported.

Gurdip Samra, 44, was arrested in a joint operation by UK’s National Crime Agency and Scotland Yard’s Organised Crime Partnerships in November last year. His accomplice, Mark Lammin, was arrested first in a holdall in Surrey, south east London, where he was found with 10 kg of cocaine.

The officers then found a black Range Rover parked in the vicinity of the holdall and arrested Samra. The duo was charged with a conspiracy to supply Class A drugs and sentenced by Kingston Crown Court on April 30.

Samra was sentenced to imprisonment for seven years and eight months, while Lammin, 44, received a jail term of six years and six months. The officers, who conducted a search of Lammin’s home address in London, charged him with possession of prohibited weapon after a stun gun was found at his Endlebury Road house.

“Lammin was blatantly walking the streets of London with 10 kilos of cocaine in a holdall that he pleaded guilty at the first opportunity shows that he knew exactly what he was doing. The fact he was also in possession of a prohibited weapon highlights the risk he posed,” Matt McMillan from the Organised Crime Partnership said in a statement.

Observing that disrupting the supply of Class A drugs is crucial to their efforts to tackle organized crime in London and to contain the subsequent violence it causes, McMillan added: “The supply and trafficking of drugs is a business which relies on cash flow –the loss of an expensive commodity will stall transactions on both sides, creating a lack of trust between crime groups.”

Drugs have been a menace in London, which is often called the “cocaine capital” of Europe. The European Drug Report 2017 put the United Kingdom as one of the three countries in the continent with the highest volume of drug online sales. MDMA and cocaine accounted for most of the sales revenue for Germany, United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

The report, released by European Commission and the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction , also said that the United Kingdom leads the way in overdose deaths, with 2,655 deaths out of the total 8,441 overdose deaths in 2015.

Earlier last month, $30,000 worth of drugs was seized by the London Police Service during a raid at a house on Wilkins Street, Globalnews.ca reported.