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On 31 July 2015, former Met police sergeant, Gurpal Virdi, stood on the steps of Southwark Crown Court and breathed in the air. He had just spent the week in the dock charged with a historic case of racially and sexually abusing a 16-year-old boy. The jury took just 50 minutes to find him not guilty. On the court steps, Virdi told journalists, “It is disturbing that the Metropolitan Police is still campaigning, targeting me and my family, year after year. “This has to stop. People have to be held to account and sacked. This ongoing campaign from 1998 has to stop.”

For a man who's been through about as much abuse as anyone could take in their lifetime, Gurpal Virdi is remarkably optimistic. The 63-year-old doesn't bear a grudge, yet he says he suffered the most appalling racial abuse both as a child growing up in a white-dominated London and as a police officer. To top it all, when it was all over and he decided to quit the police and stand as a local councillor, he says the Met levelled completely unproven accusations of sexual abuse against him which derailed his political career.

In most cases of historical sexual abuse, it commences with a knock at the door and you are faced with two detectives standing there asking to confirm your name. Immediately, you realise that they are police officers your mind thinks the worst, has somebody died or hurt, someone’s house broken into, an accident. Then suddenly, you hear that an allegation of sexual assault has been made and they want to come in.

Growing up in the UK you think that what is being reported in the media is true. You’re told: this country has strict defamation rules, the BBC is respected throughout the world, and our journalists and reporters are truly hardworking. I grew up with a host of newspapers and programmes like World in Action, Panorama, Rough Justice, Newsnight, Channel 4 News, Dispatches and host of others exposing the evils of the world and making our government more accountable.

In December 2018, the Home Affairs Committee launched an inquiry to examine progress made to date against 70 recommendations made by Sir William Macpherson in 1999 in the report of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry.

The deadline was short and with the Christmas holidays approaching, I wrote my submission because I wanted to inform the inquiry of the reality of working in a police force that is ‘institutionally racist’. Other people, who also wanted to make submissions, complained to the inquiry about the short timescales over the holiday period. 

The recently departed head of security at King's College London (KCL) not only spied on student activists but is also a former Scotland Yard intelligence chief who oversaw the dodgy operation that targeted police whistleblower Gurpal Virdi, the Eye can reveal. Retired detective chief superintendent Alaric Bonthron left KCL just before it published a damning report last month into how he passed personal details of 13 innocent students to the police without any formal request, and in breach of data protection laws.

CAMPAIGNERS have dismissed the claim by the chief of Britain’s biggest police force that it has “transformed” and is no longer institutionally racist. This year marks 20 years since the damning inquiry into the Metropolitan Police over its handling of the racist murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in London in 1993. The inquiry by Sir William Macpherson branded the force “institutionally racist”.

In December 2018, the Home Affairs Committee launched an inquiry to examine progress made to date against 70 recommendations made by Sir William Macpherson in 1999 in the report of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry.

The deadline was short and with the Christmas holidays approaching, I wrote my submission because I wanted to inform the inquiry of the reality of working in a police force that is ‘institutionally racist’. 

Victims of miscarriages of justice have been excluded from government talks over how to tackle problems with evidence disclosure, a student campaigner claims. Liam Allan was on bail for two years, having been wrongly charged with rape and sexual assault. In 2017, three days into his trial, the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the case after disclosing 40,000 messages from a computer disk that revealed his innocence.

Justice campaigners have vowed to speak out about the failures of the criminal justice system in a symbolic vigil outside London's Royal Courts of Justice. As City workers began heading home yesterday evening, Liam Allan and Annie Brodie-Akers, founders of Innovation of Justice, stood outside the landmark, taped their mouths shut and held up a banner stating: 'The criminal justice is failing. It is time to talk.' 

A FORMER Metropolitan Police sergeant says evidence showed Britain's biggest force is still "institutionally racist" and needs to improve its record on retaining on retaining ethnic minority staff. With the Met Police marking 20 years since the publication of the landmark Macpherson Inquiry into racism within its ranks, Gurpal Virdi said there has not been enough progress.

SCORES of people have been wrongly convicted after police and prosecutors conspired to withhold evidence that could have cleared them, MPs have been told. A committee of MPs investigating the disclosure of evidence in criminal trials scandal have been swamped with claims of police and prosecution corruption leading to miscarriages of justice.