New Delhi:

An Indian-origin woman in the UK has pleaded guilty to murdering her 10-year-old daughter who was found dead with stab wounds earlier this year. Jaskirat Kaur, 33, pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of her daughter at the Wolverhampton Crown Court today.

10-year-old Shay Kang was found dead at home on March 4 with stab wounds in her chest.

Jaskirat Kaur, also known as Jasmine Kang, was arrested by West Midlands Police shortly after the body was discovered at approximately 12.10 pm. At the time of her arrest, Kaur denied the murder charge.

Kaur though admitted to the lesser charge of manslaughter during the court session. Judge Michael Chambers has set her sentencing on that charge for October 25, when she is expected to attend the court in person.

Prosecution counsel Sally Howes KC informed the court that the guilty plea to manslaughter was acceptable to the Crown, and there was no dispute over the facts of the case.

Brickhouse Primary School, where Shay was a pupil, issued a statement at the time to say the school was deeply saddened by the tragic death.

“Shay was a bright, happy, fun-loving child who was well-liked by all, and she will be very sadly missed by everyone,” read the statement.

Tributes including toys, cards, and balloons poured in and some parents of children who attended the same school had set up an online GoFundMe fundraiser to collect money for Shay’s funeral.

The fundraiser read: “As you may be aware she had no family except her mum. The purpose of this is to come together as a community to help raise funds for her funeral and to also help with flowers, head stone etc. She didn’t deserve this at all and the best we can do is make sure she flys (sic) high in the most beautiful way.”

London:

A gang involving Indian-origin men that used frozen chicken consignments among their many covers to smuggle drugs has been busted by UK police and now its members face prison sentences ranging between 16 and two years each.

Maninder Dosanjh, 39, was jailed for 16 years and eight months, and Amandeep Rishi, 42, faces imprisonment for 11 years and two months for their role in the conspiracy to supply class A banned drugs and money laundering at Birmingham Crown Court last week.

West Midlands Police told the court they seized 400kg of “high-purity” cocaine as well as GBP 1.6 million in illegal cash as investigators dismantled the wholesale supply chain, which saw the 10-strong gang transporting the drugs in pallets of raw chicken.

“This far-reaching investigation covered the importation, exportation and wholesale national supply of cocaine and money laundering,” said Detective Chief Inspector Pete Cooke from the West Midlands Police’s Regional Organised Crime Unit (ROCU).

“We were able to expose the gangs’ activities which were both sophisticated and on a commercial scale, with them using a network of highly trusted individuals and a fleet of vehicles with hidden compartments,” he said.

“We believe they were responsible for importing hundreds of kilos of cocaine, estimated to be over a tonne, resulting in them making huge sums of cash, thought to be over GBP 10 million,” he added.

Some of the illegal cash recovered by West Midlands ROCU was found stashed in vehicle tyres and industrial machinery inside vans disguised as mechanical service vehicles. The police also recovered 225kg of cocaine destined for export to Australia that had been stored at a warehouse in Sutton Coldfield, in the West Midlands region of England.

“But all this enterprise was illegal and was putting large quantities of drugs, which we know destroy many lives and blight many communities, onto the streets both here in the UK and overseas. Our teams were able to trace the activity, identify the criminals and ultimately put them behind bars with considerable jail terms,” DCI Cooke added.

The gang communicated with each other using the Encrochat platform, an encrypted messaging app that criminals believed couldn’t be accessed by law enforcers. It has since been shut down by investigators as part of a major UK-wide operation.

These messages discussed the logistics, management and delivery of up to a tonne of cocaine and large amounts of criminal cash being collected or delivered in the UK.

Dosanjh and Rishi were the first to be arrested with over 150kg of cocaine hidden in frozen chicken produce when police officers in Birmingham stopped the van they were in coming back from docks in Essex. Others in the gang were arrested after one of the gangsters collected wheels and tyres in the West Midlands before driving to London, where they were passed to another gangster in a residential street. When the tyres were cut open, they were found to contain around GBP 500,000 in cash. On another occasion, just over GBP 1 million cash was recovered from a concealed compartment of an air compressor in another of the gang’s vans stopped by officers.

The 10 men, who lived in Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Sandwell, Walsall, South Staffordshire and London, were all arrested within 10 days in July 2020. They went on to plead guilty to drug smuggling offences between March and August 2020, with their sentencing taking place on August 20 this year.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

London:

London police said they had arrested a teenager after a 15-year-old girl was stabbed to death on her way to school on Wednesday, stoking fresh concern about the scale of knife crime in the UK.

Emergency services including an air ambulance were called to the scene in Croydon, south London, at around 8.30 am (0730 GMT) following reports of a stabbing.

Paramedics battled to save the girl but she was pronounced dead at the scene 50 minutes later, police said, adding that a 17-year-old boy was later arrested.

London mayor Sadiq Khan said he was “heartbroken” by the fatal incident and pledged to “continue working day and night to end the scourge of knife crime in our city”.  

According to official figures, 99 people under the age of 25 were killed in England and Wales with a knife or sharp object in the year to March 2023. Of those 13 were under the age of 16.

The deaths were among 50,000 stabbing incidents in the year to March 2023, a five percent increase on the previous year and a 75 percent increase on a decade ago, the figures from the Office for National Statistics showed. 

Police said the suspect in custody was being questioned by detectives.

“Our immediate thoughts are with this young girl’s family who are facing the most tragic of news. Our officers are with the girl’s family to support them,” said Chief Superintendent Andy Brittain of the Metropolitan Police.

Victor Azare, a 50-year-old security guard on his way home after a night shift, said he and others chased a boy in a school blazer after seeing him stab the girl in the neck with a knife that was “black, thin, and about a foot (30 centimeters) long”.

“We tried to catch him and a lot of people tried to save the girl. I was so shocked, I was shaken. It’s somebody’s daughter,” he told British media.

Media reports said the girl had just got off a bus at the time and appeared to have been having an argument with a boy who then attacked her.

The girl, whose identity has not yet been released, was a pupil at Old Palace of John Whitgift School, a private girls’ school in Croydon.

“We are deeply shocked by the senseless and tragic death of our much-loved and valued friend and pupil,” the school said in a statement.

“It will take some time for the Old Palace community to come to terms with this terrible news.

“Above all, we send our love and deepest sympathies to the girl’s family at this unimaginably distressing time,” it added.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)