EX-MAYOR of Peterborough Raja Akhtar has sworn to a jury on his "children's lives" he did not forge voters' polling cards to sway an election in his favour.
The 52-year-old former Conservative councillor is alleged to have fiddled the postal votes of four people in the city's Central ward in the run up to the council elections in 2004. But giving evidence for a second day at King's Lynn Crown Court yeste
rday, he insisted he interfered with polling cards only because he was asked to do so by the voters themselves.
Akhtar, of Newark Avenue, Peterborough, told the court he was approached by an elector who asked him to complete postal voting forms on behalf of himself, his wife, his sister and his mother because he "needed assistance and didn't understand the system".
Akhtar said he filled in the forms requesting their ballot papers be sent to the address of a mutual friend before handing them back to the voter to post.
Prosecutors allege the forms were used to commandeer the ballot papers so the votes could be cast by Akhtar himself, which he denies.
Defence counsel Balbir Singh asked him: "When you filled out the poll card, did you think you were creating a false document?"
"Never," replied Akhtar. "I don't believe they were false."
It was revealed in court that all four postal vote applications had been signed by the male voter, even though each individual should have authorised the forms themselves. Akhtar said he had no knowledge at the time this was illegal.
He said: "I swear on my children's lives I did not know that. If I had known he had signed them all himself I would not have (filled in the forms)."
Akhtar, who served as mayor in 2004 and 2005, is charged with four counts of forgery.
His co-defendant, former Tory councillor Abdul Razaq (48), of Foxdale, New England, is accused of forging a total of eight postal votes. Both men deny the charges.
Razaq is expected to take the witness stand when the trial continues next week.
The full article contains 355 words and appears in Peterborough ET newspaper.
