People smugglers who brought Indian migrants to UK in boot of car jailed

Palvinder Singh Phull and Harjit Singh Dhaliwal were arrested at UK border in Dover within days of each other

The Indian migrants claimed they were Afghan Sikhs (UK Home Office)

Two men who smuggled seven Indian migrants, including women and children, into the United Kingdom in the boots of their cars have been jailed.

Law enforcement officers arrested Palvinder Singh Phull, 48, at the UK border in Dover when they discovered three Indian nationals -claiming to be Afghan Sikhs – in the boot of his hire car on 8 July 2018.

Four days after Phull was arrested his co-accused Harjit Singh Dhaliwal, 45, was stopped at the same checkpoint as border security personnel discovered four more Indians – who also claimed to be Afghan Sikhs – hiding in the boot of his car.

The Home Office on Friday 14 July said Phull, from Hounslow, and Dhaliwal, from Middlesex, had been sentenced to six years in prison after they pleaded guilty to assisting unlawful immigration at Canterbury Crown Court on Thursday 13 July.

While Phull received a three-and-a-half-year term, Dhaliwal was jailed for three years and two months.

“Today’s sentencing sends a clear message to those abusing our laws and borders: we will stop at nothing to bring to justice anyone attempting to smuggle people into the UK,” the deputy director of Criminal and Financial Investigations at the Home Office, Chris Foster said in a statement.

“We will continue to work closely with our law enforcement partners to disrupt people smuggling gangs and make sure those who break our laws face the consequences,” Mr Foster added.

Women and children were smuggled in the vehicles (UK Home Office )

The department discovered Phull and Dhaliwal were working together after going through their phone records.

Earlier this week, a Romanian man was sentenced to more than 12 years in jail for the manslaughter of 39 Vietnamese migrants, including women and children.

Marius Mihai Draghici, 50, pleaded guilty to 39 counts of manslaughter and conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration at the Old Bailey last month. The Vietnamese nationals died in an airtight sealed container as it was being transported by ferry from Zeebrugge in Belgium to Purfleet in October 2019.

In a televised hearing at the courthouse on Tuesday, Mr Justice Garnham told Draghici he was an “essential cog” in a conspiracy that made “astonishing profits out of the exploitation of people desperate to get to the UK”.

He said the conditions inside the trailer where the victims died were “unspeakable” with “people trapped inside the trailer with no ventilation and no way of getting out”.

And in March, three people were handed an 11-year sentence for trying to smuggle Turkish nationals, including one person hiding in the boot of their rented Peugeot, into the UK.