A trainee solicitor who tried to assist her murderer brother in fleeing the country has been banned from being employed by any Solicitors Regulation Authority regulated law firms.
Husna Khan had worked as an employee in the legal profession since 2020, the same year when - between 12 and 20 August - she hid her brother, Khayam Khurshid, in a hotel and then left the country with him so he could avoid prosecution for murder, the SRA said.
Khurshid had been in a car with another person who fired shots fatally wounding a teenage boxer named Cole Kershaw on 12 August 2020. Khurshid and his accomplice fled the scene.
Six days later Khurshid was arrested in Amsterdam by Dutch police, while Khan was arrested on her return to England. Financial transactions made to try to enable Khurshid to flee the county, paid for by Khan and her sister, totalled £2,800, the regulator added.
After her arrest, Khan began working as a trainee property lawyer in the conveyancing department of Stockport firm O’Neill Patient Solicitors. The firm was not aware of Khan’s arrest, nor did she inform it when she was convicted at Manchester Crown Court on 2 July 2024 of assisting an offender. It became aware of the case only when a police website recorded, on 19 August 2024, that Khan had been jailed for 30 months, after which it reported the matter to the SRA and terminated her employment.
In a judgment published on Tuesday, the SRA said Khan’s conviction ‘posed a risk to public confidence in the solicitors’ profession and in legal services provided by authorised persons’.
The regulator disqualified Khan from working as a head of legal practice, head of finance and administration, a manager or an employee in law firms regulated by the SRA. She was also directed to pay costs of £600.
