Their unpretentious suburban life revealed nothing of their secret identity.
Neighbors of Arti Dil and her husband Kaval Raijada may have raised eyebrows over their 15-year age difference. She was a strict-looking lady-type, while he was a smartly dressed man who wore sharp suits.
But they discovered that the low-profile couple, who ran a squalid housing association flat in west London, not only avoided extradition for the murder of an 11-year-old boy in India, but were also two of Britain’s biggest drug lords. I didn’t know that at all.
Mr Deal, 59, and Mr Raijada, 35, of the Escobar family from Ealing, were each sentenced this week to 33 years in prison for smuggling £700m of cocaine into Australia between 2019 and 2021. Ta.
They set up a Breaking Bad-esque car wash to launder their ill-gotten gains, moved £3m in boxes and suitcases around various London storage units, and left sandbags in their flat. I hid seven gold-plated bullion bars in my bag.
Police from the National Crime Agency told The Sun how the couple spent at least four years planning the crime and took jobs at a transport company to learn how to move goods through customs. He said there was also.
They were so brazen that they continued to hatch a drug smuggling scheme while fighting extradition from the UK to India, and were accused of plotting the murder of their adopted son in order to obtain a £150,000 insurance payout.
NCA senior investigator Piers Phillips said: “We believe they have been planning this operation for a long time, probably going back to 2015.
“During that time, they were subject to extradition proceedings, which may have slowed, but certainly did not stop, their drug trafficking operations.”
Neighbors in Hanwell, an upmarket Ealing town known for its zoo and beautiful towboat promenade beside the Grand Union Canal, said they had no idea the “odd couple” were the masterminds behind the crime.
Cleaner Rose O’Sullivan remembers making small talk with her seemingly friendly neighbor, Arti Dill, two years ago.
Rose, 52, said: ‘I was gardening and she leaned out the back window to say hello. She seemed like a nice, normal person.
“I remember asking her how she was doing and she said she was feeling great and we talked about how nice the weather was and simple things like that.
“The only other time I saw her was when I was taking out the trash cans. She was wearing traditional Indian dress and was greeting me.
“I never met her husband, but they had a beautiful car and they always parked it outside their apartment.
It was a very simple apartment with not much furniture.There was nothing good about the property.
NCA Case Officer Lee Facey
“When I read about the crimes they committed, I was really shocked. I had no idea she was a bad woman. If I had known what kind of woman she was, I would have stayed away from her. Sho.”
Another woman, who lives on the same tree-lined street in Hanwell and asked not to be named, said: ‘They seemed like an odd couple to me.
“I only saw them a few times, but it was obvious they were together and he was much younger than she, so the age difference made them stand out.
“Everyone here is in shock because this is a very quiet area and we never expected to share the road with drug dealers.”
Learned the tricks of the trade at Heathrow Airport
Dhir and Raijada might never have met if their dying father hadn’t needed help.
Deal, a British national, came to the UK as a child in the 1960s, when many Asians died in African countries due to persecution.
She met Raijada, who was studying in the UK from India around 2010, and ended up taking a job with Deal’s family caring for his elderly father.
The couple married in 2013 and immediately set out on a get-rich-quick scheme.
By the time they got married, Deal had already worked for 10 years at Heathrow’s Air Service Company, handling product paperwork and documentation.
Raijada joined her company in March 2014, but the two left within a few months of each other in late 2016.
Police believe the pair used the skills they learned to set up their own air freight forwarding company, Vielfi Freight Services, which was used as a front to export £700m worth of coke to Australia.
They seemed like an odd couple to me.I only saw them a few times but it was obvious they were together and he was much younger than her, that age difference made them stand out
Neighbor
However, the shameless couple had already made headlines in India for allegedly plotting the murder of their adopted son.
The couple, who have no children, were accused of arranging a racketeer against tragic orphan Gopal Sejani after taking out a life insurance policy on him in 2017.
Indian authorities say they took him from the farm where he lived in poverty with his sister and promised him a comfortable life in London.
Police said Deal had taken out a £150,000 insurance policy on Gopal, which would pay out after 10 years or if he died.
When Gopal is abducted by two men on a motorbike, stabbed and left on the side of the road, suspicion, perhaps understandably, falls on Dhir and Raijada.
Criminal operation timeline
2013 – Arti Dil and Kaval Raihada get married. He worked as a caregiver taking care of her father.
2014 – Raijada will join his wife, who works for an air cargo company, at Heathrow.
2016 – The two quit their jobs and start their own transportation company.
February 2017 – 11-year-old orphan Gopal Sejani is kidnapped and attacked in India.
July 2019 – The couple fought and won extradition to India over Gopal’s death.
2019 – The pair started moving money around, depositing £740,000 into 22 different bank accounts over two years.
June 2021 – Deal and Raijada were arrested at their home in Hanwell, west London. Police found gold worth £5,000 in a punching bag, £60,000 in a safe deposit box and £13,000 lying around the property.
February 2023 – The couple were arrested for a second time after NCA officers discovered around £3 million in cash hidden in boxes and suitcases at a storage facility in Hanwell.
Gopal’s brother-in-law, Harsuk Kardani, was also attacked while trying to protect the boy, and both later died from their injuries in hospital.
Britain’s chief magistrate ruled there was strong evidence to convict the couple, thanks to a confession from one of the killers and a payment made to him.
However, a British court rejected their request to extradite them to face trial in India, saying that if convicted they would be sentenced without the chance of parole, a violation of human rights.
They were free to walk the streets with their cocaine before taking it to the UK and transporting it to Australia, where it fetched three to four times the street price.
The secret of the dilapidated apartment
Police say the pair were not even suspected of drug trafficking when Australian Border Force found six metal toolboxes filled with 514kg of cocaine on a commercial flight from the UK in May 2021. That’s what it means.
The National Crime Agency traced the documents on the packages that were returned to the VeeFly shipping company in Deal and Raijada. Police raided their home in Hanwell in June 2021.
NCA case officer Lee Facey said there was nothing special or flashy about the couple’s lifestyle.
She said: “It was a very simple apartment with not much furniture.
“There was nothing good about this property. We searched it and found £13,000 in random places like drawers and in desks, and £60,000 in a safe deposit box.
“We then discovered what we believed to be gold bars inside the punching bag. They later turned out to be gold-plated silver bars.
“We have information that indicates one of the bars was sold to Diehl believing it to be gold, so potentially she could have been fooled.”
Europe’s cocaine capital
Britons are the biggest users of cocaine in Europe, according to a report.
Figures from England and Wales show that 2.7 per cent of people aged 15 to 64 use the drug each year.
This equates to approximately 1.02 million people in our population, or 1 in 37 people.
Men are twice as likely to use it as women, with 1 in 26 men admitting to using it, compared to 1 in 63 women.
According to statistics from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, our country is the highest in Europe and second out of 41 countries in the developed world, only lower than Australia’s 4.2%.
Brits were more likely to use the drug than people in Mexico (0.8%) or Colombia (0.62%).
Figures from the Office for National Statistics show 872 people died from cocaine addiction in England and Wales in 2021, more than double the 369 deaths in 2015.
The number of deaths from all drugs will reach a record high of 4,907 in 2022.
As NCA officials continued to investigate the two men, they began desperately trying to launder the illegally obtained cash.
They bought an £800,000 one-bed flat in Ealing, a £62,000 Land Rover, and a car wash franchise in Harrow. The couple claimed that in just 11 months he had £200,000 cross the company’s books.
Police later found details on Mr Raijada’s mobile phone showing he was paying for a warehouse in west London. Police searched the property and found £3 million in cash inside cardboard boxes and cases.
They also held £740,000 in cash in 22 different bank accounts.
Despite being caught almost red-handed, the two tried to distance themselves from the drug conspiracy.
They claimed to have received cash from wealthy families, but the jury didn’t believe them and they were convicted of 12 counts of drug exportation and 18 counts of money laundering.
Case officer Lee Facey described Mr Diehl in court as a “cynic”, but said Mr Raijada “thought he was the smartest person in the room”.
Their mismatched relationship drew attention in court, with the couple insisting their marriage was genuine and Raijada saying neither of them had many friends and neither family was present at the lawsuit. .
Senior Inspector Phillips said the scale of the smuggling into Australia by the pair was “almost unprecedented”.