Arti Dhir and her husband Kaval Raijada had everyone fooled.
The matronly-looking woman and her much younger husband who lived in a grim housing flat in West London’s Ealing neighborhood turned out to be two of the UK’s biggest drug kingpins — who’d also successfully evaded extradition over the suspicious death of an 11-year-old orphan in India.
Dhir, 59, and Raijada, 35 — dubbed the “Escobars of Ealing” — were sentenced to 33 years in prison this week for smuggling $880 million of cocaine to Australia between 2019 and 2021, The Sun reported.
The pair meticulously planned their criminal enterprise for at least four years, the outlet said.
Unfazed by extradition proceedings related to the Indian murder charges regarding their adopted son and an insurance payout, they continued plotting their drug trade, even getting work with a freight company to better navigate customs, according to The Sun.
Residents in affluent Hanwell recalled the couple as seemingly ordinary neighbors. Rose O’Sullivan, a cleaner who interacted with Dhir, said she was shocked,
“I was doing the gardening when she leaned out of her window at the back to say hello,” O’Sullivan recalled of an encounter with Dhir two years ago.
“She seemed like a nice and normal person. I remember asking how she was and she said she was good … I never saw her husband, but they did have a beautiful car that was always parked outside their flat,” she added.
“I was absolutely shocked when I read about the crimes they committed. I had no idea she was a bad lady. If I had known what she was like I would have stayed away from her.”
The pair laundered their money via a makeshift “Breaking Bad”-esque car wash and shuttled their millions around town in various storage units. Seven gold-plated bullion bars were hidden in a punching bag at their apartment, The Sun reported.
Police say the couple set up their own air cargo shipping company — Vielfy Freight Services — as a cover to ship the cocaine to Australia.
The shady scheme was hardly the couple’s first brush with authorities.
They were accused of ordering a hit on orphan Gopal Sejani in 2017 after taking out life insurance on the 11-year-old they promised to take from his life of poverty in India to their home in London.
Police said Dhir took out a $160,000 life insurance policy on Sejani.
The boy was later kidnapped and stabbed to death by two men on motorcycles — and police wondered if it could have been planned by Dhir and Raijada, who married in 2013, according to The Sun.
Britain’s chief magistrate ruled there was enough evidence to convict the couple after one of the hitmen confessed. But the UK courts ruled against extraditing the pair — allowing them to walk free and sell cocaine to Australia.
Cops first raided their home in June 2021, and they were convicted of 12 counts of exporting drugs and 18 counts of money laundering.
A senior investigator called the scale of the smuggling into Australia by the duo “almost unprecedented.”
