Heir to fortune serves just seven months in jail

Driver who killed youngster released

AMULTI-MILLIONAIRE’S son who caused the death of a toddler who died nine years after a horrific crash has been released from prison after just seven months.

Antonio Boparan, 32, left Cerys Edwards with devastating injuries after he ploughed his Range Rover Sport into a Jeep while speeding at 70mph in a 30mph zone.

Cerys, who had just celebrated her first birthday, was thrown from her baby seat and broke her spine in the crash, leaving her severely brain damaged and paralysed.

She was unable to speak and required round-the-clock care and permanently dependent on a ventilator following the crash in November 2006.

Cerys underwent dozens of major operations over the years but died at Birmingham Children’s hospital on October 17, 2015.

Boparan, former director of Midlandbased 2 Sisters Food Group and heir to his father’s £800 million fortune, was previously convicted of dangerous driving in April 2008 but released just six months into a 21 month sentence.

Following Cerys’s death, police reopened the case and a post mortem revealed the youngster had died as a result of injuries from in the collision.

Boparan, of Sutton Coldfield, was charged with causing death by dangerous driving 13 years after the collision.

He was jailed for 18 months in March after he admitted the charge at Birmingham Crown Court.

But on Wednesday it emerged Boparan has now been released from prison after just seven months.

It means he has ended up serving just one extra month than his previous sentence imposed for dangerous driving.

Boparan was just 19 when he caused Cerys’s injuries while overtaking in his mother’s Range Rover.

The Edwards family were returning home from delivering Christmas presents when Boparan crashed into them on the wrong side of the road on November 11, 2006.

He could have faced 14 years in prison if Cerys had died at the time but instead served just six months in prison.

The outrage sparked a campaign for Government action.

Labour’s former Justice Minister Jack Straw called the Edwards family himself to give them the news about what became known as ‘Cerys’s Law’.

As a result of the changes anyone convicted of causing serious injury by dangerous driving now faces up to five years in prison instead of the previous maximum of two.

Cerys was awarded £5 million compensation in 2012, along with a guaranteed annual payout of £450,000 to help pay for her annual care bill.

At the time Judge Martin McKenna, sitting at Birmingham County Court, described it as the “saddest and most tragic case” he had ever come across.

The Range Rover Boparan was driving in 2006 was owned by his parents, Ranjit and Baljinder Boparan, who run the 2 Sisters Food Group – the third