A rogue landlord who harassed and illegally kicked out his tenant has been jailed for 12 months.
Mirza Tariq Mahmud Jaral, of Burmer Road, Peterborough, denied the charges but was found guilty after a trial at Peterborough Crown Court and ordered to pay more than £8,000 in compensation to the victim, who had lived at the same address.
Council officials were first alerted in early July 2020 due to concerns for the tenant’s safety and about the landlord’s behaviour. They investigated allegations that the locks to the property, also on Burmer Road (pictured), had been changed and that Jaral had moved in with two men, which were confirmed by the tenant and two witnesses.
The court heard that the tenant was initially allowed to return to his home, although one evening found that all his personal possessions had been bagged up and dumped in one of the bedrooms where he then lived for a short period. Later that month, he returned home from work to find all the locks had been changed.
Arrest
After failing to turn up to one the hearings at magistrates court (pictured), a warrant was issued for Jaral’s arrest and he remained in custody until the crown court hearing.
The judge also awarded £1,000 compensation to the tenant for emotional distress along with £7,350 for loss of personal possessions.
Housing enforcement officer Peter Bezant says this was by far the most serious case he has had to deal with in almost 27 years’ service. However, David Smith (pictured), property solicitor at JMW, tells LandlordZONE that a custodial sentence is virtually unheard of in this type of case, or is not even prosecuted.
He adds: “Magistrates courts typically give feeble sentences but because landlords will often get a third party to conduct an illegal eviction, it’s hard for the tenant to prove it was the landlord. The Renters Reform Bill could contain detail that would tidy up the different bits of legislation around this.”
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