Griffith's $20m drug case on hold until translator is free

Updated November 7 2012 - 2:29pm, first published March 21 2011 - 10:30pm

THE 10 people charged over recent drug busts in Griffith fronted Wagga Local Court yesterday.It took almost one-and-a-half hours to process the accused Indian nationals, as they could not speak English and had to get a friend in court to translate.Indian nationals Deepak Kumar, Kulvir Singh, Amrit Singh, Kulvinder Singh, Jasvir Singh, Parminder Singh, Gurinder Singh, Gurbehj Singh and Kamalijeet Kaur all appeared in person.Paul Beniamino Apolloni and Francesco Sergi didn’t appear due to an audio-visual link malfunction.Each accused was adjourned back to Griffith Local Court with the eight Indians due to appear next Monday, March 28, as a Punjabi interpreter was not available in Wagga.Sergi’s charges were adjourned to June 15 and Apolloni will be back in court on April 15.None of the accused applied for bail.The accused are facing a range of charges, from cultivating and possessing a commercial quantity of a prohibited plant to participating in group criminal activity and firearm offences.More “persons of interest” are expected to be charged in the coming days after police seized more than 10,000 cannabis plants, worth an estimated $20 million, over the course of last week.As many as 10 plantations were discovered during the five-day crackdown, one of which found a number of people harvesting cannabis in the middle of the night.Meanwhile during a separate raid a 14-year-old boy was arrested after being found in a “drying shed” at a property in Tharbogang.

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