For the first time ever, the House of Lords Conduct Committee of the UK Parliament recommended the expulsion of a peer, Pakistani origin Lord Nazir Ahmed on charges of sexual assault. He announced his retirement before the report was published. This seemed like a repeat of his resignation in 2013 from the Labour Party two days before he was scheduled to appear before the Labour Executive Committee for antisemitic remarks he had allegedly made in an interview on television in Pakistan. Nazir Ahmed has been a known anti-India figure in UK politics, known to be closely aligned with the Pakistani establishment.
The House of Lords Commissioner for Standards found that “Lord Ahmed breached the Code of Conduct by failing to act on his personal honour in the discharge of his parliamentary activities by agreeing to use his position as a member of the House to help a member of the public but then; sexually assaulting the complainant, lying to the complainant about his intentions to help her with a complaint to the Metropolitan Police regarding exploitation by a faith healer, exploiting the complainant emotionally and sexually despite knowing she was vulnerable”. He denied the allegation of exploiting his position, but his appeal was also rejected. House of Lords has formally taken away all the privileges from him.
This was not the first accusation of impropriety against Nazir Ahmed. In March 2019, he was charged with two offences of attempted rape and one offence of indecent assault between 1971-74, on a boy and girl who were both under 13 years old. His two elder brothers have also been charged with indecent assaults on boys as young as 8 and 11 years. According to media reports, Ahmed’s trial was to take place earlier this year, but was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Nazir Ahmed is no stranger to controversy. In 2007, Nazir Ahmed was involved in a fatal car crash, leading to a jail sentence, for which he, reportedly, spent a few days of prison time. Apparently, he has stated incorrectly in subsequent interviews that he had no criminal record and his sentence had been overturned. In a replay of his earlier alleged antisemitic remarks,The Times newspaper of London revealed that he had blamed a Jewish conspiracy for his driving conviction.
Nazir Ahmed seems to have had a knack for making bizarre claims. He claimed in 2012 that the attack on Malala Yusufzai could have been carried out by unknown elements in Pakistan to discredit the Taliban, though he later accepted that he had no idea of what had happened!
Though Nazir Ahmed began his political career as a local Councillor from the Labour Party, he is better known for his ties with Pakistan government and his lobbying in the UK Parliament for the so-called Kashmir issue on Pakistan’s behalf. He claimed to have changed the Labour Party’s policy on the ‘Kashmir’ issue and to have had it discussed on the floor of a conference organised by Justice Foundation, whose then Director, Ghulam Nabi Fai, was arrested by US authorities for spying and illegal lobbying. US prosecutors reportedly alleged that Kashmir Centres of Justice Foundation in UK, USA and Saudi Arabia were run on behalf of Pakistani government and its Inter-Services Intelligence Agency.
Nazir Ahmed was in the forefront of demonstrations outside the High Commission of India, including efforts to mobilise crowds to join these so-called protests, believed to have been orchestrated by Pakistan. Important occasions like visits of dignitaries from India, Indian Independence Day and Republic Day have been special targets. He was involved in organising the large and violent crowds that gathered outside India House in London on India’s Independence Day on 15th August 2019, when a group of innocent Indians celebrating the occasion were attacked.
Given his one-track politics and the notoriety surrounding him, he is unlikely to be missed in the House of Lords, except, of course, by Pakistani intelligence agencies. This development raises serious questions about the validity of the moral high ground that UK Parliament or its members often adopt while denigrating the democratic institutions in a democracy like India.
(Mrs Ruchi Ghanashyam is the former High Commissioner of India to the UK. With a career in Indian Foreign Service for over 38 years, she has been posted in many countries including before arriving in the UK. She was only the second woman High Commissioner to the UK since India’s independence and during her tenure, she witnessed a number of significant developments in the UK-India relations).
