By Dipankar De Sarkar, IANS
London : In a celebrated case involving one man against the police, a British Asian traffic cop who was jailed on theft charges after suing his police force for racism is to have his conviction quashed Monday — 14 years after he took it to court.
Sultan Alam, who has always claimed that his colleagues framed him for theft, will now have his name cleared, the Guardian newspaper reported, adding the government prosecution had decided not to contest his appeal against conviction.
Alam hit the British headlines in 1993 after starting legal action against his police force in Cleveland, 450 km north of London, claiming he had been the victim of racial discrimination and named four officers. Examples of racial harassment included a Ku Klux Klan poster being left on his desk.
But just before the case was to be heard, Alam was arrested — by the brother-in-law of one of the officers he had complained about — on charges of handling stolen car parts and jailed for 18 months in 1996.
At the same time, the Police Federation of England and Wales withdrew their support to him.
Alam served nine months of his sentence and was dismissed in 1997 in disgrace after a 13-year career.
But on his release, the dogged Alam spent a year gathering evidence against Cleveland Police, and in 1999, when an independent force — Northumbria Police — launched a lengthy investigation into the case he presented this evidence to them.
As a result, in 2004, all four Cleveland police officers originally named by Alam were charged with offences of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, perjury and inciting another to steal.
Evidence gathered by the investigators showed that these officers had manufactured and manipulated evidence against Alam and had destroyed evidence that would have proved him to be innocent.
Alam then took the Police Federation of England and Wales, which had refused to assist him in overturning his conviction, to the Employment Tribunal, representing himself throughout the proceedings.
Unbelievably, the federation had twice turned down his request for financial assistance, while paying for the legal defence of the four policemen who were being sued by Alam.
In a landmark ruling in September 2006, the Tribunal found the federation guilty of racial discrimination and victimisation and awarded Alam 25,000 pounds in compensation, but the policeman declared: “My fight to clear my name is not over, this is just the next step.”