A fuel fraudster from Worcestershire has been set free by top judges - because he was threatened and intimidated by suspected Irish paramilitaries.

We previously reported how Charnjit Randhawa, 51, of Main Road, Hallow, had won the first stage of an appeal against a two year sentence passed earlier this year.

He was locked up at Birmingham Crown Court on March 22 after admitting two counts of fraudulent evasion of duty.

Randhawa had owned a fuel distribution company and dodged £79,000 worth of tax by mixing different fuels.

He had bought cheaper fuels – which were not taxed – and mixed them with diesel.

He then sold the fuels through his firm, GR Fuels, and profited from the extra fuel duty.

The fraud emerged after kerosene was found in the diesel tank of a taxi, which had used a station owned by Randhawa to fill up.

However, at London’s Appeal Court, prosecutors accepted that Randhawa had ‘suffered threats to him and his family if he did not continue to accept fuel’.

Balbir Singh, defending, argued that the Crown Court judge ‘did not give sufficient weight to the very substantial duress in this case’.

Randhawa was ‘under the impression there are paramilitaries behind this, he has been assaulted, he has been threatened with a shotgun’, added the barrister.

Lord Justice McCombe agreed the ‘sentence was excessive’ and instead should have been 18 months at the appeal earlier this month.

And, given the ‘exceptional nature of this case and the exceptional nature of the intimidation which the Crown accepted occurred’, he suspended the term.

Freeing Randhawa, the judge, sitting with Mr Justice Warby and Mr Justice Knowles, ordered him to remain under supervision for two years.