New Delhi

Britain’s Conservative Party MP Imran Ahmad Khan (48) was convicted on Monday of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy after plying him with gin at a party in 2008.

A jury at Southwark crown court in London found Khan guilty of assaulting the boy at a party in Staffordshire in January 2008, 11 years before he became an MP. Khan’s legal team said he would be appealing, The Guardian reported

The date of sentencing is yet to be fixed.

He is the second British politician of Pakistani origin to be convicted of sexual abuse since January when disgraced former Labour peer Lord Nazir Ahmed of Rotherham was jailed for five years and six months for sexually abusing two children in the 1970s,

Also Read: Lord Nazir Ahmed jailed for child sex offences

By Monday evening the Conservatives announced that Khan had been expelled.  The Opposition Labour Party has called on him to immediately resign his seat.

The victim said he was not “taken very seriously” when he made the allegation to the Conservative party press office in December 2019, days before Khan was elected as Wakefield’s first Tory MP since 1932, The Guardian reported.

He complained to police days after Khan helped Boris Johnson win a large Commons majority by taking seats including Wakefield in the so-called red wall that had formed Labour’s heartlands in the Midlands and northern England.

Khan tried and failed to ban press reporting of the case, saying his life could be at risk were the case against him made public.

He argued that as an Ahmadi Muslim, the consumption of alcohol and homosexuality are strictly prohibited within his faith, and the reporting of those matters would expose him to “a risk to his safety both here and abroad”.

The court heard that Khan had plied the boy with gin and tonic before dragging him upstairs to watch pornography and groping him in a bunk bed.

Giving evidence, the victim’s parents both broke down in tears as they told how their son was left “inconsolable” and “shaking” after the incident at a house in Staffordshire.

Police were called to the house and the boy reported the incident, telling officers Khan had asked him to “show me some porn” and told him he was a “good-looking boy”, the jury was told.

The 15-year-old did not want to take it any further and the allegation was not pursued at the time, but the complainant went back to police when he found out Khan was standing as an MP in the 2019 general election.

Khan was suspended from the Conservative Party in June 2021 after being charged with sexual assault, and has sat as an independent ever since.

The jury also heard evidence from another man, who said he was sexually assaulted in his sleep by Khan in Pakistan after a party where they were smoking marijuana and drinking whisky.

The man, who was then in his early 20s, told a jury Khan offered him a sleeping pill as they shared a room in a guesthouse in Peshawar, a city in the west of Pakistan. Khan was working on a project for the Foreign Office at the time.

The man firmly rejected a suggestion by the defence that he had consented to sexual activity with Khan. He told the court he had reported the incident to the British High Commission and the Foreign Office, but did not want to go to police in Pakistan because of Khan‘s “powerful connections” in the military and government, The Guardian said.

He came forward as a witness after hearing Khan had been charged with sexual assault, the court heard.