British carpenter facing death penalty after arrest in Bali

Baath Jarnail Singh was arrested in his room at a beachside budget hotel in Bali on 14 February.

The British carpenter is accused of smuggling cocaine into the Indonesian island last December. He is then said to have cooked the class A drug into a paste before it was collected and sold.

And now the 53-year-old is facing the death penalty with Indonesia having some of the world’s toughest anti-drug laws with a zero-tolerance approach to drug-related crimes.

The death penalty is typically imposed there for large-scale drug trafficking cases.

And Singh was allegedly caught with 3lbs of cocaine in his room in The Legian Mas Beach inn. The Denpasar police say the drug was separated into five large packages and sat in a suitcase in the Brit’s wardrobe.

His boss gave him 'operational expenses', which he used to rotate hotels. (Viral Press)

"During interrogation, he admitted that he arrived in Bali on December 20, 2025," police chief Leonardo Simatupang said in a statement

“Then, on December 26, he met with two men at the NAM Hotel and received a shopping bag containing cocaine and two scales.”

The chief added: “The two men asked BJS to keep the cocaine and that someone would pick it up."

Photos show a barefooted Singh walking behind another suspect while dressed in orange prison clothing, wearing a face mask with his hands tied together. The carpenter was reportedly lured in with promises of a large payment to move the illegal drugs around the island, frequented by tourists, travellers and partygoers.

Authorities reckon Singh was given 10 million IDR (£441) by his boss to act as ‘operational expenses’. He then allegedly used this money to move around different hotels.

Simatupang said the suspect ‘stored the cocaine in a suitcase’ which he kept in a wardrobe.

“He made the cocaine ready for consumption by mixing it with soda and boiling it until it hardened and formed a solid paste, which was then picked up by other men,” the police chief continued.

Indonesia has some of the world's toughest drug laws. (Viral Press)

"BJS was promised a reward of HKD 50,000 (£4,730), and he said he had already been sent HKD 2,000 (£190) ten times."

In Bali, being caught with anything over five grams worth of narcotics means the country’s penal code automatically triggers the legal presumption of trafficking. Therefore, prisoners are likely to face an even more severe sentence than possession – with the life death penalty often imposed for cases like this.

The UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office for comment told LADbible: “We are providing assistance to a British national detained in Indonesia and are in contact with the local authorities.”