A former Tory MP jailed for groping a 15-year-old boy has been freed from jail after serving half his prison sentence.
Imran Ahmad Khan was jailed in May last year for 18 months after being found guilty of sexually assaulting the teenager after a party in 2008.
The 49-year-old lost a Court of Appeal challenge against his conviction and sentence in December.
The disgraced Wakefield MP was spotted leaving HMP Brixton in south London on Wednesday morning and was met by friends who helped him carry his belongings to a car before he was driven away.
The Ministry of Justice later confirmed he had been released.
Two days after winning his West Yorkshire seat in the December 2019 general election, Khan contacted one of the victim’s relatives expressing concerns about the 2008 incident, and the victim later went to police.
Khan was expelled from the Conservative Party and resigned following his conviction, triggering a by-election in the constituency which was won by Labour.
During his trial in May 2022, Khan’s victim, now 29, said he was left feeling ‘scared, vulnerable, numb, shocked and surprised’ after the then 34-year-old, touched his feet and legs after a party at a Staffordshire house.
The future MP reportedly came within ‘a hair’s breadth’ of his victim’s privates as he went to sleep in a top bunkbed, after plying him gin and inviting him to watch pornography earlier that evening.
In a statement read to the court, the accuser spoke of the impact the incident had on his life, from finding it difficult to be touched during his teenage years to the toll the trial had taken on his mental health, including suicidal thoughts.
‘I worry when I have my own children I will find it difficult to leave them alone with strangers,’ he said, noting how his parents had struggled to cope with their own feelings of guilt for allowing Khan to attend a party at their house.
Sentencing him, Mr Justice Jeremy Baker said: ‘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.
‘Although it may well be over the years you had let yourself believe you had got away with having committed this offence, I am sure you were aware from the outset there was a risk there would be a day of reckoning.’
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