BURST
A woman who sped away from a U.S. border crossing into Surrey with 108 kilograms of methamphetamine in duffel bags in the trunk of her rental car has been sentenced to 5½ years in prison.
The lawyer for Sukhvinder Kaur Sangha, 47, who has worked as a radio and TV host and producer for the past 10 years, had sought two years or less of house arrest plus three years probation for the 2021 smuggling attempt, according to a judgment in B.C. Supreme Court.
The prosecutor was seeking 10 to 12 years in prison for the mother of three grown sons.
Sangha pleaded guilty to importation of drugs — estimated by police to be worth between $1 million and $10 million , according to the B.C. Supreme Court judgment in New Westminster.
Before sentencing, the court had to determine Sangha’s moral blameworthiness, according to the judgment by Justice John Gibb-Carsley.
During a three-day hearing, Sangha said she imported the drugs to pay someone who was threatening to kill or harm her then-teenage son if she didn’t pay $150,000.
Her lawyer argued her circumstances amount to “near duress” or coercion, but the prosecutor said her testimony should not be accepted as truthful, and Gibb-Carsley agreed.
On Oct. 18, 2021, at 4:20 p.m., Sangha drove a rental car with a Florida licence plate to the Pacific Crossing in Surrey, showed her passport and said she had flown to Washington the day before for her aunt’s funeral, according to the judgment.
The Canada Border Services Agency officer asked her to pull over for a vehicle search, but she sped away. Another border officer chased her with emergency lights on, honking at her to pull over, it said.
She eventually slowed down because of rush hour traffic and was stopped and arrested. Police found four duffel bags with the drugs and two iPhones and an erased iPad.
Court heard that Sangha had made three similar trips to the U.S. that year, in August, September and October, about two weeks before she was arrested, but there was no evidence showing she had imported drugs on those trips, although Gibb-Carsley suggested she had.
Court heard Sangha was born in Prince George and lives in Burnaby, and once trained for and worked as a pharmacy technician. She had worked as a Punjabi-language producer and broadcaster for a decade.
In that role, she had covered gang-related issues, interviewed politicians, celebrities and police officers, and helped organize a rally to warn the community about youth crime and drug use, court was told.
All three of her sons, including the younger two who live at home, depend on her for financial and other support. Sangha, who is divorced, also cares for her sick 78-year-old mother and pays all the bills, Gibb-Carsley wrote.
Her pre-sentence report did not include any letters of support because Sangha had not told her friends, family or coworkers about her arrest or criminal legal process because she was ashamed of what she did, he said.
The prosecutor stressed that if such crimes aren’t sufficiently penalized, gangs will use individuals like Sangha with the promise they won’t receive lengthy sentences if caught.
Her lawyer relied primarily on a 2022 judgment in which a long-haul trucker who was threatened by threats to kill him and his children if he didn’t import 30 kilograms of methamphetamine, was sentenced to four years in prison.
Sangha testified the threats came from the husband of a longtime friend, who at a party at the couple’s house, told her she needed to pay someone $150,000 to take care of a threat against her and her son.
“It appears that this vague threat came out of thin air,” Gibb-Carsley wrote.
She said she was afraid to go police, got calls in the middle of the night from someone, and eventually was told she could pay off the debt if she transported illegal electronic chips that she understood to be drugs across the border.
She took three previous flights to the U.S. in August, September and earlier in October 2021. On the fourth trip, she drove to a house in Los Angeles to pick up the drugs.
But Gibb-Carsley said, “Ms. Sangha’s story is not credible, and I am not persuaded that it is more likely than not that she was acting under ‘near duress,’” for a number of reasons.
“It does not strike me as plausible that someone with Ms. Sangha’s background would not — when faced with an ambiguous hearsay threat to her son — attempt to address it by approaching the police or someone in authority,” he wrote.
In addition, text messages between her friend she paid $2,000 to drive the rental car back to the U.S. show Sangha “coaching (her) to lie to the U.S. border agents to gain entry into the United States” and suggest she was more involved with smuggling than she admitted.
The judge also noted that it appeared from the texts that she had imported drugs on the earlier trips.
Addressing Sangha, Gibb-Carsley said he derived no pleasure in sentencing her, but said the illegal drug trade isn’t a victimless crime.
“I have found that you participated in large-scale drug importation and by doing so contributed to an activity that negatively impacts and harms society,” he said, before acknowledging the hardship to her and her family.