Jail for dealer involved in county-wide drugs gang

A drug dealer from Peterborough who deliberately crashed his car in a bid to avoid court has been jailed for 15 years for conspiring to supply drugs with a street value of millions of pounds.

Shazad Ahmed Shabir, 38, who was part of a supply chain across Cambridgeshire, was arrested in 2021 by the Eastern Region Special Operations Unit.

He was due to stand trial in September 2025 but crashed his car and was taken to hospital on the day the trial was due to start.

Shabir, of Fulbridge Road, was sentenced at Cambridge Crown Court on Friday after admitting conspiracy to supply 11kg of cocaine and 4kg of heroin, with a street value of about £2.2m. He also admitted three counts of money laundering.

Detectives linked Shabir to a handle used on EncroChat – an encrypted messaging service popular with some criminals.

Decoded messages showed he was part of an organised criminal gang which supplied drugs and moved hundreds of thousands of pounds in cash.

Det Ch Insp Rob Turner said: "We don't know for certain the true extent of this operation, and the amount of drugs Shabir was involved in supplying is likely to have been even greater than what he was convicted for.

"Our financial investigators will now be using the Proceeds of Crime Act to seek to recover cash and any other assets acquired as a result of this criminal activity."

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