A 47-year-old woman who worked as a Punjabi radio and TV host in Canada for the past 10 years has been sentenced to 5.5 years in prison after she was caught red-handed while smuggling meth from the US in 2021. The verdict was handed down recently after Sukhvinder Kaur Sangha pleaded guilty to importing drugs, estimated by the police to be of wother $1 million to $10 million. Her lawyer said she was forced to do the crime to pay someone who was threatening to kill or harm her then-teenage son if she didn’t pay $150,000, Vancouver Sun reported. Sangha’s lawyer sought two years or less of house arrest plus three years’ probation while the prosecutor was seeking 10 to 12 years in prison.
Attempt to import drugs in 2021
On October 18, 2021, Sangha drove a rental car with a Florida licence plate through the US-Canada border in Surrey. She showed her Canadian passport and told the officers that she had flown to Washington for her aunt’s funeral. The Canada Border Services Agency officer asked her to pull over to search her car, but she sped away.Another border officer chased her, honking at her, forcing her to eventually slow down. Officers found foul duffel bags with drugs and two iPhones and an erased iPad. Sangha had made three similar trips to the US that year in August, Septemer and October. It was not known whether she imported drugs on those trips too.
Who is Sukhvinder Kaur Sangha?
Sangha was born in Prince George. She was trained as a pharmacy technician and worked in that role for some time. Then she worked as a Punjabi-language producer and broadcaster for a decade. She interviewed politicians, police officers, and and celebrities as a host, and was an active community member, vocal against youth crime and drug use. A single mother of three, Sangha also takes care of her 78-year-old sick mother. The prosecutor stressed that if such crimes aren’t sufficiently penalized, gangs will use individuals like Sangha with the promise that they won’t receive lengthy sentences if caught.
