The sentencing of a woman for looking after a sawn-off shotgun that a 15-year-old boy took into a Kempston school has been adjourned because she is about to have a baby by Caesarean section.
Keesha Kalyan, 20, previously of Bedford, but now living in Church Road, Cowley, Uxbridge, denied being in charge of a prohibited weapon in October 2018, but was convicted by a jury in November.
She was due to be sentenced at Luton Crown Court this month.
On Friday, January 21, 2022, Judge Gary Lucie adjourned the case until March 4, 2022, and granted her bail.
At her trial the jury was told pupils alerted staff at the Kempston Challenger Academy that the boy had the gun in his rucksack. He was taken to Head Ian Evason’s office.
When the black rucksack was searched, a gun was found wrapped in a t-shirt and tracksuit bottoms inside a sports shop bag.
There were also six live 12 bore cartridges. Prosecutor George Heimler told the jury that as the boy was being taken from the school, the defendant Kalyan took a photo which she circulated on social media.
He alleged that she attached a caption that read: “Free my yung G… got bag with the Dotti” Mr Heimler said that Dotti was urban slang for a shot gun and G stood for gang member.
Keesha Kalyan’s fingerprint was found on the draw string of the sports shop bag inside the rucksack.
The jury was told that the boy had pleaded guilty to possessing a prohibited weapon at the school at 9.15 in the morning of Friday, October 19, 2018. Mr Heimler said messages were “critical” in the case.
On October 10, 2018 he said Keesha Kalya had texted the boy saying: “I am grabbing a dotti ffs don’t tell anyone.” Keesha Kalyan’s case is that when she used the word Dotti it had nothing to do with a shotgun.
She said she was referring to a religious artefact she had got as a present, relating to the Hindu festival of Diwali. She told the police she sent the photo of the boy being escorted from the school and had deleted it.
She said somebody else had added the caption: “Free my yung G…….”
