A 31-year-old Oldbury man who helped bring a kilo of cocaine valued at nearly £39,000 into the Black Country has been put behind bars for eight years.

Parvinder Kumar was with his cousin Jagdish Kumar when they picked up a bag containing the controlled drug from a man who was being kept under observation in a covert police operation mounted by officers in Leeds.

The officers then followed the cousins to Walsall where they stopped their rented BMW and found the cocaine stashed in the boot, said Miss Sarah Buckingham prosecuting.

She told Wolverhampton Crown Court the cocaine had a street value of £38,760 and it was bound for dealers aiming to supply it on the streets of the Black Country.

Parvinder Kumar, of Callahan Drive, Oldbury had denied possessing cocaine with intent to supply but he was convicted by a jury after they retired to consider the evidence at the end of his three day trial.

Jagdish Kumar 32 of Penn Road, Wolverhampton admitted the charge and he was sent to prison by Judge Martin Walsh for five years four months.

The Judge told them it was clearly a joint enterprise and it involved a significant amount of Class A drugs which would have caused “substantial harm and damage" to users in the area.

He said he was unable to figure out who was the "leading light" in the enterprise as he described the two men as "couriers" and ruled only a "substantial" period of imprisonment was appropriate.

Mr Robert Cowley defending Jagdish Kumar said he had started a number of businesses that had failed and, when the offer of making some "easy" money came his way he fell into temptation because of his "desperate financial circumstances."

Mr Adrian Amer for Parvinder Kumar told the court that he had hired the BMW at the behest of his cousin and he was not a man who needed to deal in drugs for financial gain.