Heroin smuggling pensioner jailed for 14 years

Shamin Choudhary, who suffers from heart failure, angina, diabetes, hypertension, arthritis and cataracts smuggled the heroin through Heathrow using a suitcase with a false bottom.

Choudhary, who has two previous convictions for heroin dealing, was planning to fly on to Brussels and customs officers had intercepted her case while she was in transit, but the flight was cancelled and she returned to her east London home.

At Isleworth Crown Court Judge Hezlett Colgan said: "This was a commercial importation of a large quantity of a class 'A' drug.

"If this importation had been successful, this quantity of drugs would have caused widespread misery and degradation and might have led to the death of some of those who took it.

"You have two previous convictions which relate to heroin. It is quite clear that only a lengthy sentence of imprisonment is appropriate in this case".

In 1989 while bringing-up her five children, Mrs Choudhary was found guilty of allowing her premises to be used for dealing in the drug and in 1994 she went down for nine years for conspiracy to supply heroin.

Lyell Thompson, prosecuting, told the court Mrs Choudhary was intercepted as she flew from Pakistan via Qatar to Heathrow on her way to Brussels on December 21 last year.

A customs officer at Terminal Three intercepted her soft-sided suitcase and tested it for drugs.

Mr Thompson said: "There was a strong smell of chemicals and the base of the suitcase was exceptionally thick. When it was pierced a white powder, which proved to be heroin, was revealed."

After losing her at Heathrow the officers traced her to East Ham Manor Way, Becton, where they arrested her and searched her home.

At first she claimed she had not travelled because she did not have a passport. But officers found a Qatar Airlines ticket and paperwork about the missing baggage.

She tried to blame a childhood friend saying she had left the items at her address, said counsel.

Mr Thompson said that both DNA evidence and CCTV footage from the flight showed that Mrs Choudhary had travelled on that flight with the suitcase.

The heroin turned out to be 7.15 kilos at 100 per cent purity with a street value here of £884,000.

A British national who came to this country from Pakistan in 1964, Mrs Choudhary admitted being knowingly concerned in the smuggling of the heroin to Britain on December 2 last year.

Defence counsel, Navjot Sidhu, said she was a very sick woman with a short life expectancy.

Her GP, Dr James Lowry, gave details of the many complaints from which she suffered.

She brought up her five children alone after divorcing her first husband but it was her second who got her involved in the drug scene, he said.

"She is someone who has been used by others. She cannot possibly be among the senior rungs of the ladder. Being vulnerable, depressed and isolated, she succumbed."