Naheed Ejaz, 61, stalled officers at her front door for over a minute and a half as her son Diwan Khan, 41, hid his phone which prosecutors said held evidence of the crime
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A former Labour mayor has been found guilty of perverting the course of justice after helping her son hide damning evidence relating to the rape of a 15-year-old girl.
Naheed Ejaz, 61, stalled officers at her front door for over a minute and a half as her son Diwan Khan, 41, hid his phone which prosecutors said held evidence of the crime.
A trial heard how Ejaz let her “mother’s love” cloud her judgment and stopped the police from doing their job in a “conspiracy of silence”.
She has been found guilty of perverting the course of justice following a six-day trial at Winchester Crown Court in Hampshire. Her son was found guilty of rape. Both will be sentenced at a later date.
Ed Wylde, for the prosecution, said the mother and son were speaking in Urdu when police turned up at their home on September 12, 2024, so they could discuss what to do with the phone without letting the officers catch on.
Bodyworn cameras worn by police caught the son referencing the “big bell”, meaning the phone, before Ejaz replied: “Keep silent, I know.”
The prosecutor added that police can’t be sure that Ejaz had “any clear idea of the trouble he was in at that time”, adding that a “mother’s love for her son will stretch some way, and in this case it stretched into criminality”.
Ejaz was a Labour councillor at the time and had recently finished a one-year term as mayor of Bracknell Forest, Berkshire.
Diwan Khan – who was her Consort of the Mayor – raped a 15-year-old girl after she “blacked out” from MDMA which he allegedly slipped into her vodka in June 2024, the court heard.
Prosecutors said the teen woke up naked in the backseat of his car and with no recollection of what had happened.
Khan then showed her a video which he filmed of him having sex with her violently, they said.
Despite attempts to stall the police, officers found and seized 26 sim cards in the house, the judge said, adding that Ejaz had 12 different contacts for Khan.
However, none of them matched the iPhone 14 phone number believed to have contained evidence of the rape. Ejaz served a one-year mayoral term from May 2023 until May 2024. She resigned as a councillor in October 2024.