London: An Indian-origin teenager has been sentenced to eight years in jail by a UK court for trying to buy explosives online to kill his conservative Sikh father who did not approve of his white girlfriend. 

Gurtej Singh Randhawa was arrested in May last year after undercover officers from the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) replaced a car bomb he ordered online with a harmless dummy device before it was delivered. 

The 19-year-old was convicted of maliciously possessing an explosive substance with the intent to endanger life or cause serious injury at Birmingham Crown Court in November 2017, and was handed the custodial sentence by the court yesterday. 

"I have no doubt that this offense was motivated by your desire to live with your girlfriend and attend university together. How the major changes in your life that you wished for were to be achieved included endangering the life of your father by setting off an explosion in his car. 

This was an offense of astonishing audacity," Justice Cheema-Grubb told Randhawa during the sentencing hearing. Randhawa paid for the bomb using crypto-currency and arranged for its delivery to an address away from his home. 

"The explosive device Randhawa sought to purchase online had the potential to cause serious damage and kill many people if he had been successful in using it," said the NCA's Tim Gregory.