Currently serving eight-year prison sentence
A former law firm partner has been struck off the roll following his conviction for rape.
At the time of the 2020 incident, Shah Syed Rashid Masood Sahib was a manager and partner at the Birmingham-based firm Syeds Solicitors. He was convicted in February 2024 at Nottingham Crown Court, according to a ruling by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.
Before the incident occurred, the 60 year old solicitor is said to have spoke with the victim, who was known to him, about his three “wives” and children. He asked to marry her, which she initially understood to be a joke.
Sahib later arranged to be alone with the victim and telephoned an Imam, repeatedly attempting to complete a marriage service over the phone. The victim refused to go through with the ceremony, despite Sahib and the Imam’s attempts to persuade her.
When she tried to distract Sahib by changing the topic of conversation, he attacked her. Although the victim was crying throughout the attack, Sahib did not react to this or ask if she consented to sex, according to the tribunal’s ruling. Afterwards, he reportedly told her, “I don’t know what happened to me.”
The victim reported the incident to the police that night and Sahib was arrested the next day. He was found guilty and convicted of rape in February 2024 and is serving an eight-year sentence at HMP Nottingham.
In an impact statement, the victim described how the attack had left her “depressed, emotional and broken.” She described her intense anxiety about having become pregnant through the attack and her thoughts of suicide. She had become isolated and felt unable to form close personal relationships. “This incident is too much to handle,” she wrote.
Sahib, who is currently in prison, did not attend the SDT hearing, although he indicated in a letter that he was aware of the hearing and it should go ahead in his absence.
“For conduct of this nature there were no words within the lexicon of regulatory and disciplinary conduct adequate to express the damage the Respondent had caused to the victim and to the reputation of the profession,” the tribunal said.
It found that “there was no doubt that the Respondent had committed an egregious abuse of trust upon a vulnerable victim and the impact of his conduct had wrought the most terrible damage upon the victim,” concluding that, “given the inherent seriousness of the Respondent’s conduct nothing less than his strike off from the roll of solicitors was required.”
(
(
