An Indian-origin trucker has been found guilty of smuggling cocaine into Canada from the US, by a Vancouver court.
Navdeep Singh Dhillon was convicted for importing 30 kilograms of cocaine, a controlled substance, and possession for the purpose of trafficking, by the Supreme Court of the Canadian province of British Columbia, The Vancouver Province newspaper reported.
On April 17, 2009, Dhillon was returning from a trip to California in the US and drove his tractor-trailer to the Pacific Highway border crossing, stopping at a primary inspection booth.
He was asked a number of questions by a Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officer and referred for a secondary inspection.
The trailer, which contained a shipment of almonds, was examined by two officers and a detector dog. They found 30 brick-like packages behind two access panels in the trailer's refrigeration compartment.
The packages, each weighing about one kilogram, contained cocaine with a total value of about USD 1.5 million.
Also found in the tractor unit were driver's logs, receipts and a socket set, tools and hardware that matched the fasteners and other hardware used on the refrigeration access panels.
The prosecution alleged Dhillon drove over the border in an empty rig, picked up a man in the US, loaded the drugs, retrieved his load of almonds, dropped off the man in the US and then returned to Canada.
The man took a bus back and forth over the border and was waiting for Dhillon and the drugs in Surrey.
The defence emphasised that the prosecution's case was circumstantial and argued that Dhillon was a "blind courier," who knew nothing about the drugs in his cargo.
But Judge Murray Blok refused to accept that Dhillon was unaware about what was hidden in the trailer.
