A STUDENT who had a “rose-tinted view” of dealing has been jailed after he was caught with over £3,000 of drugs at Boomtown festival.

Junaid Ahmed was searched by security on the second day of the festival in 2018 and was found to have two bags containing drugs and cash.

The 24-year-old had over 19 half gramme deals of cocaine, 182 MDMA tablets, and crystallised MDMA, along with cannabis and ketamine.

Winchester Crown Court on Monday heard that Ahmed also had £2,961.18 on him, but in an interview he told officers that the money was from savings and that owed to him.

Siobhan Linsley, prosecuting, said that the former biomedicine student claimed that the bag with the drugs in was a “communal bag in his group” that he had picked up, but examining his phone police found that Ahmed had been dealing drugs at the festival.

Ahmed was sentenced to three years in prison after he pleaded guilty to possessing class A and B drugs with intent to supply and being in possession of criminal property at earlier hearings.

In mitigation Alec Small said his client was from a Muslim background and there was a part of his upbringing that had a “weight of expectation on his shoulders” and Ahmed developed mental health difficulties.

After going to the University of the West of England he decided to delay his exams and was left with money difficulties due to tuition guidelines.

Mr Small said: “He needed a way to make money fast. He is a drug dealer that doesn’t have a history of drug usage, he in fact had a sort of rather warped view of what drug dealing was. He saw a way of getting rich quick to pay off his debt.”

Judge Richard Parkes QC was told that Ahmed had been violently assaulted and stabbed when he visited Bristol after moving back home to Cardiff as he still owes drug suppliers money.

In sentencing, Judge Parkes said: “Drug dealing at Boomtown festival is a major major local problem and it is something that is taken very seriously by the courts here in Winchester.”