Drug dealer who specialised in hiding drugs in his backside has sentence halved
A drug dealer who specialised in hiding class A substances in his backside has had his sentence almost halved, after a ruling by top judges.
Judges heard that the conspiracy operated in the Wednesbury and West Bromwich area for 18 months.
Khan and his co-conspirators cruised the streets in a fleet of VW and Audi cars, always with a 'large tub of Vaseline' to hand on the dashboard, London's Criminal Appeal Court heard.
If they spotted a police officer, they would scoop out a handful of Vaseline, rub it on their backsides, and quickly hide their stash, a practice known as 'plugging'.
Khan was caught however, when police stopped his car in May 2014 and decided to search him - because he looked uncomfortable.
He was 'found to have a bag of drugs protruding from his backside'.
"A large tub of Vaseline was found in the car, from which a large scoop had been removed," Mr Justice Sweeney told the court.
Khan, of Crompton Road, Handsworth, was jailed for five years four months in May last year at Birmingham Crown Court, along with other gang members.
He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply heroin and crack cocaine.
But Mr Justice Sweeney, Lord Justice Bean and Judge David Griffiths Jones have now cut his sentence almost in half, reducing it to three years.
It resulted in previously 'very respectable streets becoming places where residents were scared to go outside their homes'.
The gang's approach to dealing was unique in that 'open tubs of Vaseline' were invariably found in the vehicles they used when stopped by the police.
"That accounted for the relatively small amount of drugs recovered from the gang by the police," the judge added.
Khan had been 'involved in 13 dealing incidents'.
But his lawyers argued that he was unfairly sentenced more harshly than the other members of the gang, when he had been no more heavily involved than them.
Mr Justice Sweeney said: "This conspiracy had a serious effect on the residents of area, making their lives a misery so that they were afraid to go outside their homes.
"It carried on for a year and a half".
But the judge concluded: "It seems to us that there was no tenable basis on which to distinguish Khan from the others...the sentence must be reduced to three years."
