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Abbotsford man sentenced for drug trafficking after trying to overturn guilty pleas

Herman Sidhu receives 21-month jail term on three of 13 charges
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Police executed a search warrant at a home on Summit Drive in November 2015. Two men pleaded guilty to drug charges in relation to that warrant and to another one at a home on Curlew Drive, and one has now been sentenced. (Vikki Hopes file photo/Abbotsford News)

An Abbotsford man who was unsuccessful in his bid earlier this year to have his guilty pleas overturned in a drug-trafficking case has been sentenced to almost two years in jail.

Herman Sidhu, 28, was sentenced Aug. 20 in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster to a 21-month jail term and a 10-year weapons ban on three counts of trafficking in a controlled substance.

Ten other counts of the same charge were stayed.

Sidhu was among three people arrested and charged in November 2015 after search warrants were executed at homes on Curlew Drive and Summit Drive in Abbotsford.

At the time, police said the arrests were part of the Townline Hill conflict. (They later began referring to it as the more wide-ranging Lower Mainland gang conflict.)

Police seized two pounds of MDMA (ecstasy), 26 ounces of cocaine and a small amount of heroin from the two homes. They said the drugs had an estimated street value of $70,000.

RELATED: Charges laid against three men in Townline Hill drug busts

Investigators also seized drug paraphernalia, $6,000 cash and two vehicles.

Sidhu pleaded guilty in September 2017 to three of the 13 charges he faced. But he later argued that the guilty pleas should be overturned because he hadn’t been given information in advance that three of the investigating officers had been the subject of disciplinary action.

His lawyer argued that Sidhu should have been able to review those details when considering whether to plead guilty.

But the judge ruled in January of this year that the evidence of two of those officers wasn’t being used in court. One of those officers had been charged in relation to a domestic incident, and the other had been disciplined by receiving use-of-force training five to seven years earlier

The judge stated that the impact of the third officer’s misconduct – not taking proper notes in two strip searches unrelated to Sidhu’s case – was “objectively minimal.”

Sidhu’s co-accused Bhaveep Deol, who previously pleaded guilty to two drug-trafficking charges, has not yet been sentenced.

Charges have been stayed against David Elliott, the third man arrested at the same time as Sidhu and Deol.

RELATED: Guilty pleas issued in Townline Hill drug charges

RELATED: Drug-trafficker loses bid to take back guilty pleas after hearing of officers’ misconduct


 

@VikkiHopes
vhopes@abbynews.com

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Vikki Hopes

About the Author: Vikki Hopes

I have been a journalist for almost 40 years, and have been at the Abbotsford News since 1991.
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