Latest news with #Snaresbrook
Daily Mail
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Coronation Street's Nicola Thorp recalls terrifying moment her 'grim reaper' stalker was 'close enough to smell her' during two-year ordeal
Nicola Thorp recalled the terrifying moment her stalker said he was 'close enough to smell her,' as she discussed her ordeal. The actress, 36, who played Nicola Rubinstein in the soap, was stalked and terrorised for two years between 2018 and 2020 by a man who called himself her 'personal grim reaper'. He used 27 different online aliases to contact Nicola, making sickening threats to choke and rape her. However, even after his arrest police refused to reveal his identity, leaving Nicola feeling 'powerless' until she came face-to-face with him in court. Her stalker, schizophrenic Ravinderjit Dhillon was finally sentenced to 30 months in jail at Snaresbrook Crown Court in east London back in December 2023. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new Showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. Speaking in a new interview with The Sun, Nicola explained: 'To this day, I don't know if I was being stalked in real life, there were messages that he sent saying that he was following me on the Tube and had got close enough to smell me. 'I felt powerless because the police wouldn't tell me who he was. That's when I got really scared because he knew I'd reported him.' She recalled how he had sent her messages that included details about her home which made her 'really concerned.' Recounting one message, Nicola said: 'I remember one in particular saying, "I'm your Grim Reaper. I'm never going to leave you", And that really chilled me.' She revealed that she still doesn't know what sparked the ordeal or how it began, but the first contact she's aware of was when the stalker sent her a photograph of his genitalia. As a women's rights campaigner, Nicola keeps her direct messages open to the public in case anyone messages her for help. Elsewhere in the interview, the actress revealed that the first time she ever saw her stalker face-to-face was when they appeared in court together and she was behind him in the security queue. Nicola faced her stalker, schizophrenic Ravinderjit Dhillon at Snaresbrook Crown Court in east London back in December 2023 with her fiancé Nikesh Patel by her side - before he was sentenced to 30 months in jail. In an emotional witness statement, the actress told of her paranoia as the stalker referred to himself as the 'Grim Reaper' as he used 25 different identities to target her and made sickening threats to choke and rape her. 'I lived in fear that this anonymous man who had hounded me for years was in fact someone I knew,' Ms Thorp told the court, as reported by The Sun. 'If you don't know who the person behind the keyboard is, he becomes everyone you meet and everyone you've ever met. 'All that time he knew exactly who I was and I knew nothing of him. 'When I was shown a photo of him it meant I had some freedom back, and only the freedom to run away if I saw him in the street.' She said that she had grown terrified about what her 'committed' stalker would do as she starred in a play last April - realising that he would know exactly where she would be. And her terror did not end when Dhillon was arrested - as she recalled that an abuser's victims are most at risk when their tormentor is 'cornered'. Dhillon began his warped campaign when he sent her an intimate photo of himself in October 2018. Sentencing Dhillon, Judge Rosa Dean said that she was 'quite sure' he had targeted Ms Thorp because of her celebrity alongside her 'determination to call out abusive and misogynistic behaviour'. She called the messages he sent to Ms Thorp 'deeply offensive and very violent' - saying they caused his victim to live 'in constant fear'.
Daily Mail
22-05-2025
- Daily Mail
Pair of 'window cleaners' made over £1m in just two years selling fake UK driving licences to criminals and illegal immigrants
Two 'window cleaners' who made over a million pounds in two years while running a 'sophisticated' operation churning out fake driving UK licences which were sold to illegal immigrants and criminals were jailed today. Bilal Iqbal, 25, and Ummad Ahmed, 32, ran 'a very large scale commercial and very profitable enterprise' which used social media to advertise the fake licences for as little as £60, with a fast-track service available for an extra £40. The pair are known to have produced the high-quality bogus documents for at least 5,000 people but National Crime Agency investigators believe it could have been as many as 40,000. Alongside incriminating footage on Iqbal's phone of licences being posted to customers were 'many videos' revealing the luxury lifestyle the men enjoyed, with high-end watches, designer clothes, restaurant bills, expensive cars and lavish holidays on display. The vast sums of cash the men made was paid to 'money mules' who allowed their bank accounts to be used before the money were laundered through a window cleaning business called Sparkle Up Ltd, where Ahmed was listed as director. The scam was discovered when the NCA investigated Liverpool drug dealer Eddie Burton, 23, who used one of their fake documents to extend his operations across Europe. Jailing the pair for six years each today, Judge Alex Gordon, sitting at Snaresbrook Crown Court, said: 'You were the leading lights in a long-running and sophisticated operation. 'You created a minimum of 5,000 false driving licences and recruited others to use their personal accounts to receive the payments from customers. 'It may have been that the target market was those underage who wanted to buy alcohol, which put them at risk of the serious offence of possession of a false identity document, but your customers included Eddie Burton who was using it to evade law enforcement.' John Turner, a senior investigating officer at the NCA, said afterwards: 'These men ran an extremely lucrative illegal enterprise and operated as professional enablers at the heart of serious and organised crime. 'These IDs helped high-profile criminals evade law enforcement and operate anonymously. 'They could also be used by offenders involved in organised immigration crime to provide people smuggled into the country with false UK identities.' The court heard how Burton fled the UK in 2021 following his arrest for supplying drugs and was living between Spain and the Netherlands under an alias to avoid detection. In the summer of 2022, his fingerprints and DNA were found on two lorries intercepted at Dover with heroin, cocaine and ketamine with a street value of £20 million concealed in adapted fuel tanks. Burton was subsequently arrested in Ibiza and was found to have sent WhatsApp messages that included details of his purchase of one of the fake documents, with payment sent to an account linked to Iqbal. The NCA then put Iqbal and Ahmed, both of east London, under surveillance, and found the former managed the financial side of the operation, while the latter created the fake licences. The documents were professional enough to pass basic checks and included genuine-looking holographic stickers that were purchased on eBay. At least 5,000 licences were sent out between 2022 and the start of this year but investigators believe the operation could have been running for up to eight years. Money mules received payments from customers in return for a five per cent cut, with just over £1 million going through Iqbal's bank accounts from January 2022 to September last year. The profit during this period was £661,455. The forgers were arrested on January 21 this year, shortly before they were due to jet away for a break in Dubai. Iqbal was on his way to a Post Office and was found clutching envelopes with 19 licences – one due to go to the US. Another 21 licences were found at his Ilford home. Ahmed was seized at his home in Hornchurch, where the equipment for making the false licences was found. It included an ID card printer, laminator, blank plastic cards, holographic foil, a hard drive and printer and more than £30,000 in cash. A storage facility near City of London Airport was also searched and a machine used to heatseal plastic was found. Prosecutor Deepak Kapur told the court: 'These two defendants, with the assistance of others, ran a very large scale commercial and very profitable enterprise whereby they advertised [and] received orders for fraudulent UK driving licences. 'Once paid for, and when printed, they were dispatched by post. They were offered for sale with prices starting at £60 for a standard licence. Additional amounts, £40, were charged for a three to four day priority service. 'Third parties were utilised to receive the proceeds of the placed orders. Once the proceeds were received, the third parties were paid commission.' Checks of the men's phones revealed WhatsApp messages which showed there were 300 customers waiting for fake licences at one point, he added. Iqbal and Ahmed pleaded guilty in February to one count each of possession of a false identity document with intent, possession of apparatus for making false identity documents, concealment of criminal property, possessing criminal property and entering into or becoming concerned with the arrangement of concealment of criminal property. Oliver Renton, defending Iqbal, said the offending followed a period of strained relationships with his family but he deeply regretted his actions and wanted to resume caring for relatives who have medical problems. Ahmed claimed he had made a 'great error of judgement' after getting into financial difficulties and his children had been left distraught as they didn't know where he was because the family couldn't bear to tell them he was in jail. NCA investigator Mr Turner added: 'Tackling enablers for wider criminality, such as Iqbal and Ahmed, is a key pillar in our mission to protect the public from serious and organised crime.'
The National
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
KELI review: A rousing brass-band odyssey of grief, grit, and ghosts
I was reminded of this insightful quote while watching KELI, writer and composer Martin Green's fine new play for the National Theatre of Scotland and his own cross-artform company Lepus. There is, you might think, a considerable cultural distance between Harlem, New York City and West Lothian. However, like the Black jazz musician alluded to by Malcolm X, Keli Wade – the 17-year-old, working-class protagonist of Green's drama – derives her greatest spiritual fulfilment from playing the tenor horn in a brass band. The play is set in the former Scottish coal mining town of Anston (a mildly fictionalised Whitburn). The last coal mine in the area may have closed 39 years ago following the Great Miners' Strike of 1984-85, but the mining community's brass band is still going strong. We meet Keli, who is juggling the demands of shop work at the local Scotmid, a college course and her mother's severe mental distress as she and her fellow members of the Snaresbrook brass band are preparing to travel to London. There the West Lothian musicians will take part in the finals of the National Brass Band Championships in the Albert Hall. Green – who made the brass band documentary Banding: Love, Spit And Valve Oil for BBC Radio 4 – has long immersed himself in the culture of colliery community brass bands. In KELI – which is set in the present day – we hear resonating echoes of the community's past. The band lives by its traditions, and there is great pride in the legendary miner, trade unionist and band leader Willie Knox, who, in the years immediately after the Second World War, led the Snaresbrook band to its famous trio of national titles. There is pride – and considerable anguish – in the memories of the strike of the mid-1980s. During that bitter dispute, current band leader Brian Farren was badly beaten and fitted up (to the point of serving jail time) by the police. From this mix of intriguing and combustible material, Green and director Bryony Shanahan have concocted an engrossing and, ultimately, deeply moving theatre work. Keli's journey – both literal and emotional – is like a modern reworking of the classical tale of Orpheus's adventures in the underworld. It is not giving too much away to say that our tenor horn-playing hero's travels and travails are conducted within the frame of her encounters with the ghost of the great Willie Knox (who is played with tremendous dignity and humour by the excellent Billy Mack). His interactions with 'comrade sister' Keli combine powerfully with the angry memories of Farren (Phil McKee on convincingly gruff-yet-decent form). Throughout the piece – from West Lothian to London and back again – the play is blessed with beautiful live playing of Green's marvellous brass score (which segues between lovely music and intelligent, atmospheric sound). The scene in which brass playing combines with hardcore electronic pop music in a London club is remarkably inventive, both theatrically and musically. The cast is universally impressive. Led by Liberty Black (who is gloriously driven-yet-vulnerable in the role of Keli), it includes deeply affecting performances by Karen Fishwick (as Keli's mother, Jane) and the Whitburn Band. If the production has a flaw, it is in designer Alisa Kalyanova's maximalist coal mine set, which is too literal and lacking in versatility. Nonetheless, this piece is a captivating triumph. As the Lepus company says: 'If the mines are dead, the music and the people most definitely are not.' Tickets can be found here. Touring until June 14.
