Pakistani politician goes on trial over alleged child sex offences in UK

• Muhammad Khurram Khan arrived in UK earlier this year.
• Khurram has been charged with two counts.
• He appears before judge via video link at Kingston Crown Court. 

LONDON: A senior Pakistani politician and scion of a well-known political family from Mansehra, Abbotabad, has gone on trial over two alleged child sex offences.

Details have emerged of how Muhammad Khurram Khan, aged 60, arrived in the UK earlier this year to attend his son’s law graduation ceremony but engaged allegedly with a child for sexual purposes – and got caught by the detectives.

The prosecution at the Kingston Crown Court told the judge that Khurram has been charged with two counts: “attempted sexual communications with a child” and “arranging or facilitating commission of a child sex offence”.

Khurram, who is in the UK on a visitor’s visa and belongs to the Khan khel clan, appeared before the judge via video link at the Kingston Crown Court from his cell in Wandsworth Prison. He was arrested earlier this year and has not been bailed yet.

At the hearing, he was represented by his lawyer Charlene Sumnall. Khan has denied the charges of minor sex offenses and people close to have him have said he has been framed and targeted. One of his close friends told Geo News that Khan is an innocent man and denies the charges by the UK’s prosecution.

Khurram thought he was talking to a girl, aged under 17, and the “girl” pretended as such but in reality there was a police detective on the other end of the social media application. The contact, its understood, started on social media.

The 2003 Sexual Offences Act provides that the age of consent across the whole of the UK is 16 — this is the minimum age when young people of any sex, gender, or sexual orientation can legally take part in sexual activity.

Khurram is the first cousin and brother-in-law of Shahzada Gustasap Khan, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf lawmaker for the National Assembly who won February 8 election against former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

There is no suggestion that any relative or family member of Khurram has any association or link with his alleged conduct or his actions whilst in the UK.

His father Mohammad Hanif Khan has been a member of parliament for the National Assembly on two different occasions and has served as a deputy speaker and a federal minister. He used to belong to Pakistan People's Party (PPP).

Khurram got his early education from Lawrence College Gora Gali and Burn Hall School & College Abbottabad.

He is a law graduate but has not been a practicing lawyer. Khurram has remained Tehsil Nazim Mansehra and Chairman Khaghan Development Authority.