Antonio Boparan's sentence will not be reviewed
A driver who caused the death of a girl nine years after crashing into the car she was travelling in will not have his jail term reviewed.
Antonio Boparan, who has family links to the 2 Sisters Food Group, had pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving at Birmingham Crown Court last month, after the crash in November 2006.
Cerys Edwards, who had then just turned one, was left paralysed, unable to breathe unaided and needing 24-hour specialist care after the car she was in was hit head-on by a Range Rover, driven by then 19-year-old Boparan.
Cerys died in October 2015 – a month before her 10th birthday – after complications caused by an infection.
Her father, Gareth Edwards, has called the blocking on legal moves to increase Boparan's 18-month sentence a "mockery of justice".
Following the sentencing of the 32-year-old, a member of the public applied to the Attorney General's Office to refer the sentence to the Court of Appeal, under terms of the unduly lenient sentence scheme.
However, the Attorney General's office said on Monday that following "careful consideration", the case would not be referred.
A spokesman said: "The threshold is a high one, and the test was not met in this case."
Mr Edwards had supported the legal application, but was not its author.
He said: "It's just a mockery of the justice system. But I have learned not to expect too much, then I don't have so far to come down, when I have been let down.
"At the end of the day, he [Boparan] is in prison."
Boparan was speeding at 71mph in a 30mph limit in Sutton Coldfield, on November 11, 2006, when he crashed. Having overtaken at least two cars, he ploughed head-on into a Jeep Cherokee driven by Cerys' mother Tracey.
Mr Edwards was a front-seat passenger and their daughter was securely fastened in a rear car seat. However, Cerys sustained what one doctor described as "catastrophic severance of the high spinal cord" and was left brain damaged.
In sentencing Boparan, Judge Melbourne Inman QC, said he had shown "an arrogant disregard for the safety of others" when he drove that day, causing "catastrophic" injuries to Cerys.
His barrister told the court it had been a "stupid and immature piece of bad driving", but that the "boy of 19 was not the man of 32".
The court also heard both Boparan and his millionaire businessman father Ranjit Singh Boparan – who founded the 2 Sisters Food Group which has plants in West Bromwich and Wolverhampton – has since raised £10 million over 10 years, through setting up the Boparan Charitable Trust for children with disabilities.
Boparan's father, the court heard, made a £200,000 payment to Cerys's parents to buy a house suitable for the child's needs, and attended a funeral service arranged by Mrs Edwards for the little girl.
In August 2017, it was revealed Antonio Boparan had taken on a director role with the 2 Sisters Food Group.
Mr Edwards, who visits his daughter's grave twice a week, added: "The irony is, had Boparan done what he did to Cerys with the new law in force, he would probably have served more time behind bars than he will have.
"He'll have effectively gone to prison for a total of 15 months, for killing a child.
"But I remember Cerys how she was. She'll never be forgotten."
An Attorney General's Office spokesman said: "After careful consideration, the Solicitor General has concluded that he could not refer this case to the Court of Appeal.
"A referral under the Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme to the Court of Appeal can only be made if a sentence is not just lenient but unduly so, such that the sentencing judge made a gross error or imposed a sentence outside the range of sentences reasonably available in the circumstances of the offence.
"The threshold is a high one, and the test was not met in this case."
