A barrister who plotted a revenge attack with a career criminal client after he was shot during a violent feud between rival drugs gangs has been jailed.
Samreen Akhtar, 38, was sentenced to three years and three months in prison at Manchester Crown Court following an investigation by specialist detectives from West Yorkshire Police‘s Economic Crime Unit.
Akhtar was working as a barrister when her client, Tabish Ali, was shot and injured in Blacker Road, Huddersfield, on 14 September 2021.
The following day, Akhtar was recorded during a telephone conversation with Ali in which she put forward a plan to locate the person responsible for the shooting so they could be seriously injured.
Client later convicted of murder
Ali was subsequently charged in October 2021 with the murder of Jamal Nedd, who had been shot outside his home in Ripon Avenue, Huddersfield, on 19 December 2020.
Mr Nedd was fatally wounded as he was driving his mother to work.
Ali, formerly of Clare Road, Cleckheaton, was later convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment alongside two other men in July 2022.
Their trial heard that the killing formed part of an escalating “turf war” between drug-dealing gangs, involving a series of violent and firearms incidents dating back to 2018.
Police believed the attempted murder of Ali in September 2021 was also connected to the ongoing feud.
Barrister convicted after five-day trial
Detectives arrested Akhtar in February 2022.
She was charged in March 2023 with encouraging or assisting the commission of an indictable offence – inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent, contrary to the Serious Crime Act 2007.
Akhtar, of Sufton Street, Huddersfield, denied the offence.
However, following a five-day trial in June, she was convicted by a majority jury verdict.
She has now been jailed for three years and three months at Manchester Crown Court.
