Roll On Friday
A former law firm partner has been struck off the roll, following a rape conviction.
Shah Syed Rashid Masood Sahib was a law firm manager and partner at Syeds Solicitors in Birmingham. The court convicted him in February 2024 for the incident which occurred in 2020.
Sahib, aged 60, was known to the victim, and spoke to her about his three “wives” and children, according to a tribunal ruling. The partner asked the woman to marry her, which she initially thought was a joke.
When the partner was alone with the victim at a later time, he telephoned an Iman, and repeatedly tried to arrange a marriage service over the phone.
When the woman attempted to distract the lawyer by changing conversation, he attacked her over a period of several minutes.
The victim cried during the attack, but Sahib did not ask if she was ok, or whether she consented to sex. After the incident, Sahib said “I don’t know what happened to me,” the tribunal heard.
The victim reported Sahib to the police, and he was arrested the following day.
In a victim’s statement given at court, the woman said that she had taken the morning-after pill and medication after the incident. She was “depressed, emotional and broken”, and had isolated herself. She had also suffered from nightmares and suicidal thoughts, the court heard.
Nottingham Crown Court found Sahib guilty of rape, and sentenced him to prison for 54 months. The Court of Appeal increased the sentence to eight years, due to the seriousness of the offence. He is currently behind bars.
Sahib did not attend the SDT hearing. The tribunal said that “there were no words within the lexicon of regulatory and disciplinary conduct adequate to express the damage” that Sahib had caused to the victim and “to the reputation of the profession”.
The panel found that given the “egregious abuse of trust upon a vulnerable victim” and the the impact which had caused the “most terrible damage upon the victim,” that “nothing less than his strike off from the roll of solicitors was required.”
The tribunal ordered that Sahib pay £6,250 in costs.
https://www.rollonfriday.com/news-content/partner-struck-rape
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