Potter girl brother in jail for assault
- Six-month term for beating up actress and threatening to kill her
AMIT ROY

Afshan Azad (right) as Padma Patil in Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire
London, Jan. 22: The brother of Afshan Azad, known all over the world as Padma Patil from the Harry Potter movies, was sent to prison yesterday for beating up the actress and threatening to kill her because she has a Hindu boyfriend.

Ashraf Azad, 28, who had pleaded guilty to assault last month, was handed a six-month jail term by a Manchester court although Afshan, 21, had appealed for leniency.

Judge Roger Thomas said a victim’s consent was not required for a prosecution and issued a stern warning to Ashraf: “This is a sentence that is designed to punish you for what you did and also to send out a clear message to others that domestic violence involving circumstances such as have arisen here cannot be tolerated.”

But anger has been expressed by Islamic leaders that media coverage of such cases and the recent claim by former home secretary Jack Straw that some Pakistani men are grooming underage white girls for sex and prostitution is demonising Britain’s entire 1.6 million-strong Muslim population.

The Tory Party chairperson, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, the first Muslim woman to serve in the cabinet, said last week: “It seems to me that Islamophobia has now crossed the threshold of middle-class respectability. For far too many people, Islamophobia is seen as a legitimate, even commendable, thing. You could even say that Islamophobia has now passed the dinner-table test.”

For Afshan, though, real life has been a lot harsher than what even Lord Voldemort was able to inflict on the pupils at Hogwarts.

Ashraf Azad (top) and Abul Azad
When Afshan, born into a working-class Bangladeshi family, became romantically involved with a Hindu boy, her father, Abul Azad, 54, and brother put pressure on her in the time-honoured way — Ashraf beat up his sister badly and even went looking for knives when Abul suggested it may be a good idea to kill her.

Neither may have been serious but in the cold light of day in a British court, words uttered in anger can sound positively medieval.

Ashraf, who had overheard his sister talking to her boyfriend on her mobile on May 21 last year, decided to impose family discipline as he saw fit, the court heard. “Who the f*** do you think you are talking to? Watch what I will do.”

“He then grabbed her hair and threw her across the room,” Richard Vardon QC, the prosecuting counsel, revealed. “She began crying and asked him to stop. The defendant began punching her with clenched fists to her back and head area. She struggled to breathe and was scared for her life. She was told she had to ‘marry a Muslim or you die’ ”.

When Ashraf’s wife, Sonia, tried to intervene, he told her “to stay out of it because he would do what he wanted with his little sister. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her up from the floor, dragging her downstairs to her father’s bedroom. She was pushed on to her father’s bed, with her brother shouting, ‘Sort your daughter out! She’s a slag!”

Afshan’s mother joined in, calling her daughter a “prostitute” and asked her how many men she had been with, adding: “Why are you obsessed with sex?”

Her father may then have said: “Just kill her!” — although this was disputed in court because of his garbled accent.

Shouting, “I’m going to kill you, I’m actually going to kill you,” Ashraf stormed into the kitchen where he could be heard fiddling around for knives which had been hidden by his wife.

Locked in her room, Afshan escaped by climbing out through her bedroom window, reported the assault to the police and initially undertook to give evidence against her father and brother. But by the time the case came to trial, she refused to come to court so that that the charges of attempted murder had to be dropped.

Nevertheless, the father accepted being “bound over to keep the peace for 12 months in the sum of £500”. This means he risks jail if he threatens her again.

Judge Roger Thomas told Ashraf: “It must have been a miserable and frightening experience for your sister which, she suggested, lasted for about three hours or so. The background to this offence lies in the concern that you, and perhaps other family members, had about Afshan’s relationship with a young man who was not of the Islamic faith.”

“She expresses forgiveness towards her brother,” the judge said, reading from Afshan’s letter. “She expresses good feelings about her family in general and brother in particular. She doesn’t wish to support the prosecution. She expresses concern about being estranged from her family.”

Afshan now lives in London. Her boyfriend has not been named possibly to ensure his safety.

Современные британские нравы, ёпта.