This is the trans refugee who runs a LGBTQ group accused of helping dozens of asylum seekers lie their way into Britain by pretending to be gay.
Sajjad Miah, 42, was granted asylum on the grounds of sexuality in 2013 saying she feared persecution in her native Bangladesh.
Ms Miah arrived in Britain as a 26-year-old young man but is now a trans woman and founded the east London-based charity Apanjon soon after winning asylum herself.
But this week she was arrested on suspicion of fraud and immigration offences, with Home Office officers raiding her home to seize phones, jewellery and thousands of pounds in cash.
Home Office sources claimed Apanjon had been charging straight men as much as £4,500 each to create fake evidence that they were gay.
This could include fake photographs or letters to corroborate their same-sex attraction – and allow them to argue that they would be subject to persecution for their sexuality if forced to return to their home country – usually Bangladesh.
The Home Office is reviewing more than 100 potentially fraudulent applications past and present linked to the group from those seeking sanctuary, under the umbrella of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), from homosexual persecution in their homeland.
Ms Miah is understood to have begun her asylum claim as a gay man before beginning her transition to a woman.
Sajjad Miah arrived in Britain as a man but is now a trans woman – and in 2013 was granted asylum on the grounds of sexuality, saying she would be persecuted in her native Bangladesh
After being granted right to remain in Britain, Ms Miah, 42, founded the east London based charity Apanjon to, she says, help asylum seekers like her using her experience
Ms Miah runs the organisation she founded from this shabby office in east London, which was raided this week by police who arrested her and two more people associated with Apanjon
She was arrested this week in early morning raids by Immigration Enforcement officers wearing riot helmets and stab vests on her London home.
She was held along with a second suspect believed to be linked to Apanjon, also on suspicion of fraud and immigration offences. A third person was arrested on suspicion of being in the country illegally.
Officers also targeted Vine Court Businesses – the shabby ‘business centre’ down a side street in Whitechapel that was, until this week, Apanjon’s head office.
Speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail after her release on bail, she said: ‘They arrested me at my house in the morning and took me to the police station for questioning.’
Ms Miah however insisted the organisation that she founded is genuine and that they are being targeted unfairly.
‘My life was in danger in Bangladesh because it is a very strict Islamic country. After coming to the UK, I was eventually given asylum and then I started my organisation to help other people in the same situation as me,’ she said.
‘We only give letters of support to LGBT people once we have observed them for six months and ensure that they are not lying about their sexuality.
‘We are a genuine organisation trying to help LGBT Bangladeshi people. There is no evidence for what they are accusing us of. We only support those who are genuinely LGBT. We have not provided any false documentation, but they asked me if I was taking money for this.
‘During the interview they questioned our credibility and said that even some immigration judges don’t believe us. But we are being victimised. We are being unfairly treated and all these allegations are incorrect’
Asked about cash and valuables seized during the raid, she went on: ‘The money was for my rent, and the jewellery belonged to my sister.’
Ms Miah said that she had eventually been released without charge although warned that she may have to return for questioning.
She revealed that she has also received death threats after details of the raid were reported in the media – but that they had come from the Bangladeshi community rather than opponents of liberal immigration policies.
She said: ‘People have been threatening to kill me saying that I’m spreading un-Islamic behaviour and ruining their culture.
‘I’m too afraid to go home and am not even staying there now. I don’t know why the Home Office is saying all these wrong things about us.’
Ms Miah’s Apanjon community group claims to ‘campaign for equality and justice for LGBT community people in Bangladesh’.
It operates from the first floor of the ramshackle business centre made up of a number of independent firms including a courier company; a money exchange company; a recruitment firm and a solicitors.
Down a side street, it is directly behind the East London Mosque, one of the largest in the capital and in the centre of Britain’s largest Bangladeshi community, which is predominantly Muslim and does not accept LGBT relationships.
Ms Miah is understood to have begun her asylum claim as a gay man before beginning her transition to a woman. She is accused of helping straight asylum seekers to pretend to be gay
The organisation provides ‘evidence packages’, costing thousands of pounds, it is alleged, included fake documents and letters of support along with staged photographs, many taken at the same gay bars and clubs.
Often Bangladeshi men only claimed to be gay after initially being refused asylum on political grounds, the Home Office said.
Apanjon then would vouch for those men on the basis they were gay only after their application had been rejected, it is claimed.
In one case, a man did not raise his sexuality until nine years after his original asylum application.
It also emerged that immigration judges have previously criticised evidence from Apanjon as unreliable or not credible and found that an applicant who claimed to have attended the group’s events had submitted staged photographs.
Its website is littered with pictures of predominantly South Asian men dressed in matching brightly coloured pink, yellow or red shirts beaming at the camera at gay events like Pride.
In many there is a multi-coloured flag with the organisation’s name emblazoned across it and the words: ‘Working for human rights. A first Bangladeshi LGBT org.’
It also shows a picture of Ms Miah standing at a lectern with a Union Jack in the background, accompanied by the words: ‘Gay Rights. Human Rights.’
It’s unclear whether these are among the photographs said to have been staged to create a false trail of gay behaviour.
The organisation claims to host ‘monthly meetings, social cultural events, and playful activities such as GAY nights’. It promises to help people with coming out as gay as well as health and fitness and organising social events.
And it advertises the offer of legal advice, stating: ‘We provide this service in order to protect an LGBT person from tortures, hate-crimes, physical & verbal abuse, discrimination, and other anti LGBT measures.
‘We regularly communicate with experienced solicitors and barristers in the UK in order for up-to-date information on legal matters to facilitate our members.’
At a rundown block in Whitechapel, the operation to arrest Ms Miah was reminiscent of the kind of tactics used to apprehend terrorists and organised crime figures.
‘It was madness,’ said a resident describing the moment around 12 officers stormed the graffiti-strewn block on Tuesday.
‘I heard them shouting, ‘Open the door now.’ Kids were getting ready to go to school when the raids kicked off.’
When the Mail visited Apanjon’s HQ earlier this week in an attempt to speak to somebody about its work, one young man standing nearby said: ‘You’re looking for Apanjon? Are you after immigration advice?
‘We see a lot of people going in and out of there, I know they have helped a lot of people stay in the UK. A lot of that is going on around here because there’s a lot of money to be made.’
And the dramatic scenes in Whitechapel will add weight to the perception that fabricating evidence about sexual orientation to remain in the country may be widespread.
Ejel Khan, founder of the Muslim LGBT Network, told the Daily Mail: ‘It’s a massive problem… A lot of people are doing it.’
He explained: ‘People have offered me money in the past to give them letters of recommendation even though they have admitted to me that they weren’t gay, so I refused. I would not entertain them.
‘I help and advocate for asylum seekers who are genuinely gay and fleeing persecution. It’s been my life’s work. The bogus claimants tarnish the work we do.’
Figures show that 2,133 asylum seekers claiming to be gay were allowed to stay in Britain in 2023 – the most recent year for which data is available where sexual orientation formed part of the basis for the application – up from 762 in 2022 and 677 in 2021. It’s four times the pre-Covid number.
In 2023, Pakistan accounted for the highest number of cases citing sexual orientation (578), followed by Bangladesh (175), where homosexual activity can result in life imprisonment, then Nigeria (103) and India (39).
Statistics on sexual orientation were not recorded in a reportable format prior to 2015.
By then, the Supreme Court had ended the Home Office’s previous policy of refusing asylum to gay refugees on the grounds they could avoid persecution abroad by pretending to be heterosexual.
Explaining the decision, Lord Rodger, one of the judges, said in extraordinary comments: ‘Just as male heterosexuals are free to enjoy themselves playing rugby, drinking beer and talking about girls with their mates, so male homosexuals are to be free to enjoy themselves going to Kylie concerts, drinking exotically coloured cocktails and talking about boys with their straight female mates.’
As the mystery over the precise focus of Apanjon’s work lingers, the issue of a person’s sexual orientation is increasingly being used in asylum applications.
Last week it emerged that a migrant jailed for two rapes on his wife and sister and deemed a risk to children had finally won the right to stay in Britain because he says he is bisexual.
The Jamaican migrant, 51, had been jailed for 18 years for attacks on two women.
An immigration judge said of the case: ‘There is nothing positive to say about his presence in the UK.’
The judge said that deporting the rapist would have been in the public interest but his appeal against deportation had to be allowed under the ECHR.
In total three people from Apanjon, which is run from this ramshackle business centre behind the East London Mosque, were arrested on suspicion of fraud and immigration offences
Earlier this year the Mail revealed how a Cameroonian man who was granted asylum in Britain after claiming to be gay was later revealed to have a secret wife and child.
Marius Kamna, 35, travelled to Britain on a temporary visa for the 2021 UN climate summit in Glasgow before claiming asylum in the UK based on his sexuality.
The asylum panel that granted him refugee status was never informed about his heterosexual marriage in Cameroon.
However, Mr Kamna insisted it was his marriage that represented the deception, not his claim to be gay.
‘I had so many secrets, I was persecuted,’ he said.
And last month a failed asylum seeker jailed for raping a 14-year-old schoolgirl has lost his bid to avoid deportation after a judge ruled he was not bisexual and remained a danger to Britain.
Karam Majdi, 27, had shamelessly claimed in a last-ditch asylum appeal that he could not be sent back to Egypt because he is bisexual and would face persecution.
But a judge has dismissed his appeal in full – finding that his deportation ‘was and remains in the public interest’.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said that asylum applicants ‘faking persecution are beneath contempt and mock real victims who need protection’.
‘To the gangs profiting from this disgraceful fraud: you will be prosecuted, stripped of your dirty money and shut down,’ she said.
‘And to those cheating the system, your claim will be thrown out, and you will be removed from this country.’
A conviction for asylum fraud carries a maximum sentence of ten years in prison.