An imam who raped a teenager during ‘spiritual healing’ was jailed for 15 years and slammed by a judge as being \u201ca fraud, a charlatan and a disgrace to your religion\u201d.<\/p>\n
Komar Uddin (68) wept in the dock at\u00a0Leicester Crown Court\u00a0after a jury convicted him of two rapes and three sexual assaults upon a vulnerable 19-year-old in her home.<\/p>\n
The married father-of-11, from Bangladesh, admitted being in Britain illegally, but had denied the sexual allegation and claimed to have worked in mosques throughout the UK.<\/p>\n
The teenager was attacked on February 25, 2015, whilst her family were downstairs and Uddin, was invited to exorcise evil spirits from the troubled and mentally fragile victim.<\/p>\n
Uddin was arrested three years ago and he\u00a0 fled the country whilst on bail.\u00a0He was extradited from Germany last November to face trial.<\/p>\n
Richard Thatcher, prosecuting, said Uddin was likely to be deported at the end of his sentence.<\/p>\n
Before passing sentence, Judge Timothy Spencer QC addressed weeping Uddin in the dock, saying: \u201cWhat are you crying about?\u201d<\/p>\n
The defendant said, through an interpreter: \u201cIt\u2019s hurting my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
The judge said: \u201cYou\u2019re just feeling sorry for yourself?\u201d<\/p>\n
Uddin replied: \u201cMy family, myself \u2026 and everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judge Spencer then said: \u201cLet\u2019s not mince words, you\u2019re a fraud, a charlatan and a disgrace to your religion \u2013 and a breathtakingly selfish man as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s (the crying) only for yourself, possibly for your family and not whatsoever for the complainant or her family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judge Spencer said: \u201cShe was 19 years old and, as you rightly said (when he gave evidence), young enough to be your granddaughter.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was very vulnerable in February 2015.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was grieving for (a family member) who had died.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe, like the rest of her family, had a deep belief in the spirit world and in djinns (spirits).<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were a trusted imam within the community.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou encouraged the belief that you were skilled in ridding believers of bad spirits; evil djinns.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve no way of knowing whether that was a genuine skill or just a pretence you put forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis family placed their trust in you, particularly the father, and you betrayed his trust appallingly.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were invited to their house and it was supposed to be for you to help that young woman with her distress, to rid her of the evil spirits.\u201d<\/p>\n
The judge said the two were alone in in semi-darkness, with candles and incense in her bedroom.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cYou used your power over her to violate her for your own sexual gratification and did nothing to assist her distress \u2013 you greatly added to her distress.\u201d<\/p>\n
The judge told Uddin: \u201cYou showed no restraint whatsoever.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou had her completely at your mercy and you raped her.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the defendant\u2019s DNA was found on her internal examination swabs, proving sexual intercourse had taken place.<\/p>\n
Judge Spencer said: \u201cIt\u2019s a shameful betrayal of your religion and the position you held within the Islamic community.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou made her believe if she told anyone it wouldn\u2019t dispel the spirits and they would return \u2013 you used that to ensure her silence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Uddin\u2019s barrister, James McLernon, said in mitigation after the verdicts: \u201cHe has no previous convictions<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t a case of him selecting the victim. The family brought him in to treat her.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe found himself in that position and took advantage of it and abused his position.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has a large family in Bangladesh, with strong ties to the community here, and this will follow him when he\u2019s back in Bangladesh.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was financially supporting his family throughout his time in the UK (since 2006) and it will have a real impact on his family.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An imam who raped a teenager during ‘spiritual healing’ was jailed for 15 years and slammed by a judge as being \u201ca fraud, a charlatan and a disgrace to your religion\u201d. Komar Uddin (68) wept in the dock at\u00a0Leicester Crown Court\u00a0after a jury convicted him of two rapes and three sexual assaults upon a vulnerable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26358,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,3,283],"tags":[1079,982,1078,929],"class_list":["post-26357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-news","category-top-news","tag-imam","tag-jailed","tag-kumar-uddin","tag-rape"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}