The disturbing case of Roger Khan – and the cost of cheap justice

The defendant, Roger Khan, was on trial for a vicious attack that left a man’s skull shattered and his brain exposed to the elements, but he had no lawyer representing him in court. He was dyslexic and had no legal knowledge, but the judge had told him that, if he fired the legal-aid lawyers he no longer trusted, he would have to defend himself. In fact, the only legal advice he was getting came from the prosecution. Throughout the four-week trial, a junior Crown barrister went down to the cells each morning to advise him on how to conduct his defence — although naturally enough, the prosecution’s aim was to get him convicted and sent to prison.

Even more strangely, some of those in court had been acquainted with each other long before the trial began. For example, one of the jurors knew the victim, the Newton Abbot restaurateur Nasim Ahmed, because she worked for his GP. (The juror was discharged at the end of the trial, but by then had been mixing with her peers for weeks.) She also knew other witnesses including Ahmed’s estranged business partner, Faruk Ali, who has a criminal record for violence and bigamy: according to one witness at the trial, in the weeks before the attack Ali had been threatening to ‘put a hit’ on Ahmed, although this is denied by Ali. Yet this trial did not take place in some backward dictatorship, but in England — before Judge Graham Cottle at Exeter Crown Court in July and August 2011. It ended when Khan, now 62, was convicted with his co-defendant, Faruk Ali’s brother Abul. Khan was sentenced to 30 years — an exceptionally harsh term for attempted murder. He remains in Whitemoor prison in Cambridgeshire.

There is no disputing the savagery of the crime. Ahmed and Ali owned two Indian restaurants, one in Teignmouth, the other in Newton Abbot.