Disgraced former Tory MP Imran Ahmad Khan has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy.
The 48-year-old was expelled from the Conservative Party and later resigned from his West Yorkshire seat after he was convicted for the 2008 attack following a trial at Southwark Crown Court last month.
Sentencing on Monday, Mr Justice Baker said Khan had shown no remorse, adding: “The only regret you feel is towards yourself for having found yourself in the predicament you face as a result of your actions some 14 years ago.’’
The court heard Khan forced the boy to drink gin, dragged him upstairs, pushed him onto a bed and asked him to watch pornography before attacking him at a house party in Staffordshire.
The victim, now 29, told the jury he was left feeling “scared, vulnerable, numb, shocked and surprised” after Khan, then 34, touched his feet and legs, coming within “a hair’s breadth” of his genitals, in a top bunkbed after the party.
Khan’s offence dates back to 2008
A police report was filed in January 2008 but no further action was taken because the boy did not want to make a formal complaint.
However, he filed an official complaint after Khan was elected MP for Wakefield in the December 2019 general election.
The victim claims he was not “taken very seriously” when he raised the incident with the Conservative Party’s press office days before Khan’s win.
Khan, who is gay and a Muslim, denied sexual assault, claiming he only touched the Catholic teenager’s elbow when he “became extremely upset” after a conversation about his sexuality.
He said the boy had become upset and “bolted” when their conversation turned to pornography. He rejected any suggestion their interaction was of a sexual nature, instead saying he had been engaged in a “philosophical” discussion about sexuality with the teen over the course of the evening.
In a separate claim, Khan is alleged to sexually assaulted a man as he slept at a guesthouse in Pakistan where the disgraced MP was working on a Foreign Office-funded project. The prosecution said it was a “mere technicality” that he was not charged with a second assault.
Conservative MP Crispin Blunt has defended Khan, claming he ‘did not get a fair trial’
Khan was found guilty by a jury in April after around five hours of deliberations and released on bail. He is formally appealing against the conviction.
He returned to Southwark Crown Court on Monday where he was sentenced by Mr Justice Baker.
One of Khan’s former Conservative colleagues, Crispin Blunt MP, has defended him, claiming on two occasions he did not get a “fair trial”.
Making the claim for the second time on Sunday, the former justice minister said it remained his judgment that Khan had faced “a serious miscarriage of justice”.
The Conservative Party condemned the views of Mr Blunt as “wholly unacceptable”.
A by-election in Khan’s former seat of Wakefield will be held on 23 June.
