NRI, friend dump 360,000 letters, jailed

Two persons, including a non-resident Indian from a private mail firm, have been jailed for two years each for throwing more than 360,000 letters and parcels into a dumping ground and earning over one million pounds each by saving the costs of delivering them. This is Britain's largest ever mail destruction case.

Some of the parcels the two dumped included vital hospital blood test results.

Judge Andrew Goymer at Southwark Crown Court on Monday banned Inderpal Narula, 33, and Royston Heaton, 42, from working as company directors Mail Logistics, in Acton, west London, for a year while awarding the two-year jail terms.

"It is agreed by all sides that fraud in this industry is rife, indeed the word endemic was used. But that is no excuse for the way in which you behaved. You were both directors of the firm and as a result of the way you ran the company, mail was dumped in huge quantities," the judge said.

"The dishonest way in which you made money makes an immediate prison sentence inevitable," he said.

Narula, from Burnham in Berkshire, was told to pay 500,000 pounds and Heaton, of Holton, Oxford 400,000 pounds in compensation within four months.

Discarded post included vital hospital blood test results, doctors letters of certification, and acceptance letters for university places.

Other victims included banks that lost sales materials, and Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, which lost copies of its product catalogue.

Mail Logistics was contracted to deliver post in bulk but Narula and Heaton ordered much of the post to be dumped in skips.

The price charged for the distribution of each piece of mail ranged from one pound to 100 pounds, which Narula and Heaton spent on luxury houses and fast cars.