Mum tells court she found metal shards in baby food

TRIAL: Man accused of spiking jars as part of blackmail plot against Tesco

A woman almost fed her daughter shards of metal from a jar of baby food allegedly contaminated by a farmer as part of a blackmail plot against Tesco, a court has heard.

Harpreet Kaur-singh, from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, had tipped the contents of the Heinz Sunday chicken dinner into a bowl and was preparing to microwave it when she saw the slivers of metal.

Nigel Wright, 45, is on trial at the Old Bailey accused of deliberately spiking the jar as part of a campaign to extort £1.4 million in bitcoin from the supermarket giant between May 2018 and February 2020.

Wright, of Market Rasen in Lincolnshire, is alleged to have bombarded Tesco with letters and emails claiming he had planted poisoned goods in dozens of stores, and offering to reveal where they were in exchange for the money.

Giving evidence via video link, Mrs Kaur-singh said she had been preparing to give her nine-month-old daughter her dinner in early December last year when she noticed “metal chippings” in the food. “I didn’t think anything of it and just binned it,” she said.

She later found metal in a jar of Heinz pasta stars.

Mrs Kaur-singh did not contact Tesco until she received notification of a product recall for all Heinz baby food after a jar containing slivers of craft knife blade was discovered by a mother in Lockerbie.

Wright is accused of contaminating the jar with the blades, and of depositing it in a Tesco in the Scottish town while delivering a tractor to a buyer on behalf of his neighbour.

In that instance, Wright is said to have marked the underside of the jar with a circle with a cross through it.

Mrs Kaur-singh said she did not notice any similar mark on the contaminated jars she had bought.

Further letters to Tesco from Wright related to Cow & Gate baby food and resulted in 140,000 units of the company’s products being withdrawn from Tesco shelves.

He allegedly claimed to be part of a cohort of dairy farmers angry at the low price they were paid for their milk, and he signed off his letters “Guy Brush and the Dairy Pirates”.

Wright denies two counts of contaminating goods and three counts of blackmail against Tesco.

Wright admits carrying out various elements of the campaign but claims he was forced to do so by travellers who came on to his land and threatened to kill him unless he gave them £ 1 million.

He denies planting the shards of metal in the baby food found in the Rochdale branch of Tesco, but accepts he placed the contaminated jar on the shelf in Lockerbie.

The trial, which is expected to last three weeks, continues.