Arti Dhir and her husband Kaval Raijada have deceived everyone.
The matronly-faced woman and her much younger husband who live in a dingy tenement flat in West London’s Ealing neighborhood turn out to be two of the UK’s biggest drug lords – who also managed to avoid extradition over the suspicious death of an 11-year-old orphan in India.
Dhir, 59, and Raijada, 35 – dubbed the “Escobars of Ealing” – were sentenced to 33 years in prison this week for smuggling $880 million worth of cocaine into Australia between 2019 and 2021, The Sun reported.
The pair carefully planned their criminal business for at least four years, the outlet said.
Undeterred by extradition proceedings linked to Indian murder charges over their adopted son and insurance payments, they continued to plan their drug trade, even getting work with transport companies to better navigate customs, according to The Sun.
Arti Dhir and her husband Kaval Raijada seem like a normal couple but they are drug lords in their seedy West London apartment. National Crime Agency
Residents in affluent Hanwell recall the couple as regular neighbours. Rose O’Sullivan, a cleaner who interacted with Dhir, said she was shocked,
“I was gardening when he leaned out the back window to say hello,” O’Sullivan recalled of meeting Dhir two years ago.
“He seems like a good and normal person. I remember asking her how she was and she said she was fine … I never saw her husband, but they had a beautiful car that was always parked outside their flat,” she added.
“I was really shocked when I read about the crimes they committed. I didn’t know she was a bad woman. If I knew what he was like, I would definitely stay away from him.”
The couple laundered their money through a makeshift “Breaking Bad” car wash and shipped their millions around town in various storage units. Seven gold-plated bars were hidden in a punching bag in their apartment, The Sun reported.
UK police discovered the couple had sent millions in suitcases to various storage locations around London. They also found silver-plated gold bars and more cash in their flat.
Police said the pair set up their own air cargo shipping company — Vielfy Freight Services — as a cover to ship the cocaine to Australia.
The shady scheme isn’t the couple’s first brush with the authorities.
They are accused of ordering the hit on orphan Gopal Sejani in 2017 after taking out life insurance on the 11-year-old who they promised to bring from his impoverished life in India to their home in London.
Police said Dhir took out a $160,000 life insurance policy on Sejani.
The child was then kidnapped and stabbed to death by two men on a motorcycle – and police are wondering if it may have been planned by Dhir and Raijada, who married in 2013, according to The Sun.
Some of the drug money seized was found in the West London apartment of now convicted drug trafficker Arti Dhir and her husband Kaval Raijada.
Britain’s chief magistrate ruled there was enough evidence to convict the pair after one of the hitmen confessed. But a UK court decided not to extradite the pair – allowing them to walk free and sell cocaine to Australia.
Police first raided their home in June 2021, and they were convicted of 12 counts of drug exporting and 18 counts of money laundering.
A senior investigator called the scale of smuggling into Australia by the two “almost unprecedented.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
