A county lines drug dealer will spent extra time behind bars for whipping a fellow inmate over malicious ‘sex offender’ slurs.
Samuel Lowton, jailed for his role in a major heroin and crack cocaine operation, attacked human trafficker Anil Wagle with an electric cord.
Perth Sheriff Court heard 30-year-old Lowton snapped after learning Wagle had been spreading false rumours that he was a rapist.
Lowton appeared in the dock and admitted the assault at the city jail on June 24 last year.
Just weeks earlier, Lowton was sentenced at Peterhead Sheriff Court for his role in an similar attack on a prisoner at HMP Grampian.
Whipping
Fiscal depute Stewart Duncan said Perth Prison staff responded to an alarm from Wagle’s cell just before 3pm.
“The complainer said he had been assaulted, but refused to say who was responsible,” he said.
“He told staff that he had been whipped by some kind of cord.”
Guards reviewed CCTV and saw Lowton entering Wagle’s cell before striking him with a cable and a plug adaptor.
When questioned Lowton, he accused Wagle of telling other prisoners he was a sex offender, said Mr Duncan.
Solicitor Mike Tavendale, defending, said his client was not due for release until 2031.
“The complainer had only recently appeared in the hall,” he said.
“He had posited that Mr Lowton was a rapist.
“This was upsetting for a number of the prisoners.”
Mr Tavendale confirmed that Wagle was not injured in the attack.
“I would ask the court to deal with this as leniently as possible,” he said.
Sheriff Wyllie Robertson handed Lowton a consecutive six month sentence.
‘Repugnant’ human trafficker
Lowton, who is originally from Aberdeen, was jailed for seven years for his role in a county lines drug operation.
He was part of a gang bringing crack and heroin into Scotland from the West Midlands.
Lowton was arrested after cops recovered nearly £6,000 worth of class A drugs from a property in the city’s Bedford Road in March 2022.
Last month, he was handed a further nine month extension for his role in assault at HMP Grampian’s Ellon Hall.
Peterhead Sheriff Court heard Lowton – along with two other inmates – attacked victim Cameron Webster with the cable from a kettle.
Perth victim Anil Wagle was jailed in 2019 for being part of a group involved in trafficking women from Slovakia to Glasgow, before forcing his victims into prostitution and sham marriages.
He was sentenced to eight years and six months for crimes that high court judge Lord Beckett described as “utterly repugnant”.
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