Pakistani politician goes on trial in UK over child sex charge

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 allegedly engaged with a child for sexual purposes – and got caught by the detectives.

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

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.