Preliminary hearings set in drug-smuggling cases

Preliminary hearings have finally been scheduled for three people accused of trying to smuggle drugs into Canada last year.

The case against one of the accused, Kuldeep Singh, was in Lethbridge provincial court Friday, during which a preliminary hearing was set for Nov. 2728.

Singh, who previously elected to be tried by a judge alone, is charged under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act with two counts of importing drugs and two counts of drug possession for the purpose of trafficking.

The charges stem from an incident Dec. 17, 2017 when officers with the Canada Border Services Agency intercepted at the Coutts border a commercial vehicle hauling produce from California to an Alberta business. While examining the vehicle, officers found 17 bricks of suspected cocaine weighing 21 kilograms, enough for more than 20,000 hits, an official reported.

The bricks were discovered in a closet inside the cab of the truck, and CBSA officers arrested the driver and turned him and the suspected cocaine over to the RCMP.

Charges against a husband and wife were also in court Friday. Gurminder and Kirandeep Toor, who have elected to be tried by a judge and jury, are scheduled to have their preliminary hearing Nov. 16. The California couple is charged with two counts each of importing drugs and drug possession for the purpose of trafficking.

A man and woman hauling a commercial load of produce from California to Alberta were stopped at the Coutts border Dec. 2, 2017. Border officers searched the cab of the truck and found 84 bricks of suspected cocaine weighing 99 kilograms, considered the largest cocaine seizure recorded by the Canada Border Services Agency officers in Alberta’s history.

The RCMP reported the drugs are worth between $6.5 million and $8 million on the street depending on how they’re broken down for sale. A media spokesperson for the CBSA said shortly after the incident that the drugs would provide on the street between 100,000 and 200,000 hits.

The shipment was destined for the Calgary area, RCMP said, but the drugs likely would have been shipped to other provinces once they were processed.

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