Mohinder Surdhar, a 56-year-old physiotherapist in Birmingham, has been charged for partnering with arms dealer Paul Edmunds in a case that the British police have come to equate with the hit TV show Breaking Bad. The ammunition created by Edmunds, 66, has been linked to 100 shootings in the United Kingdom.
Edmunds posed as an antique dealer and bought vintage weapons from the United States. He converted them into lethal weapons and sold them with bullets, which he created in his home, to Surdhar, who acted as the middleman. The latter sold the weapons and ammunition to a head gangster, who then supplied them in the criminal network.
The ammunition was used in murder of three individuals and a shooting on a police helicopter.
Edmunds was discovered after a receipt with his name was found in Surdhar’s custody. Surdhar pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to conspiracy to transfer prohibited weapons and ammunition. Both individuals lived a double life, the doctor was a firearms dealer while the pensioner, Edmunds, turned his middle-class house in Gloucester into an ammunition factory.
“They were like the Breaking Bad of the gun world — on the face of it both decent men, but using their skills and expertise to provide deadly firearms,” Detective Constable Phil Rodgers from West Midlands Police said in a statement. “But this was no TV drama — these were real weapons; real bullets; real victims. Their actions have had a devastating impact on communities by fueling violent crime, leading to fear and bloodshed. Edmunds has an encyclopedic knowledge of firearms. It’s not an easy task making obsolete caliber bullets to fit antique guns; it would have taken several days to make a box of 50. Surdhar also had an armory at his home and we believe Edmunds was teaching him the art of bullet making.”
The investigation was launched in 2014, after an expert at the National Ballistics Intelligence Service (NABIS) noticed that many of the handguns that turned up at crime scenes were pre-war. These guns required special ammunition, which had certain markings, leading to the fact that one individual was manufacturing them.
The police found £375,000 in Edmunds’ bank account, 100,000 rounds of live ammunition and tools to convert the antique weapons at his house. Edmunds faces 25 years in jail while Surdhar also faces a long prison term.