A former Labour mayor has been jailed for three years after helping her son hide evidence when he was arrested for raping a 15-year-old girl. Naheed Ejaz, 61, who previously served as Mayor of Bracknell Forest, was convicted of perverting the course of justice after delaying police and assisting her son, Diwan Khan, in concealing a phone that allegedly contained video evidence of the attack.
Winchester Crown Court heard that officers arrived at the family home in Bracknell in the early hours of 12 September 2024 to arrest Khan. Prosecutors said Ejaz refused to let them in for some time and then spoke to her son in Urdu in an attempt to help him hide his phone. The court was told the device likely contained material relevant to the rape case.
Khan, 41, was later jailed for 12 years after being found guilty of raping the teenager in June 2024. The court heard that he put MDMA into vodka he gave the girl, causing her to black out. She woke in the back seat of his car with no clothes on and no memory of what had happened.
The girl said Khan showed her a video of him having sex with her, choking her and slapping her, and threatened to show the footage to her mother if she told anyone. He also told her that she “belonged” to him and threatened to slit her throat if she reported the assault.
Judge Rufus Taylor said Ejaz had “chosen to protect” her son despite knowing the crime involved an underage girl. He said there was a real risk Khan might have avoided prosecution if his mother had not obstructed officers. The judge added that her “mother’s love for a son” had stretched “into criminality”.
Ejaz, who had been Mayor of Bracknell Forest for 2023 and is understood to have stepped down in September 2024, was jailed for three years. Khan will serve eight years in prison before any parole consideration, and he was also handed a 20-year sexual harm prevention order, an indefinite restraining order and a lifetime notification requirement on the sex offenders register.
In a victim impact statement, the girl said the attack devastated her education and mental health. She said she missed a lot of school, failed her GCSEs, and later tried to take her own life in June 2025 because of the trauma. She told the court the abuse had affected her family’s life and that she had struggled with flashbacks, sleeplessness and ongoing fear.