Shopkeeper wants police to admit error in making unsubstantiated sexual exploitation claims

Shopkeeper Chintan Shah, who has run Meadowcroft Express convenience store and off-licence in Upper Stratton for 18 months, wants Wiltshire Police to admit they made a mistake when they said children were exchanging sex for the ability to buy drink there.

Mr Shah said: “This has been a very difficult and upsetting time for me and my family. I’m trying to build a business and serve my community and to be accused of that is such a bad thing. People have been looking at me differently since the police said these things.”

When the county force wrote to Swindon Borough Council’s licensing committee to review the licence Mr Shah holds it did so citing a number of reasons – mainly to protect children from harm.

It alleged that youngsters were able to buy alcohol and tobacco and cigarettes and vapes and vape products illegally from the shop.

But the force also made a very serious allegation that the shop:  was “being used to perform underage sexual acts for alcohol.”

But to back that assertion up, all the police could provide was one sentence at the end of a submission about a 15-year old girl who had told officers she had bought cider at the shop. It said: “There have also been under-age females that were served alcohol in this shop in return for the young person performing sexual acts.”

Mr Shah told the three-councillor strong panel there was nothing to back up this claim and the panel did not find it to be true.

Mr Shah said after the panel meeting: “The police did not have any evidence. It was just hearsay that they put in. It could have been said by anyone – perhaps someone who doesn’t like me. Or someone who wants to damage my businesses. There was no evidence at all.

“Nobody from the police came to talk to me, which you thought they would if f their making such a serious allegation. The first I knew was when I got a letter saying the council was to review my licence.”

The shopkeeper, who has a young family himself, added: “Imaging having to tell your family that’s what the police are saying about you. And people have been behaving differently to me, looking differently at me.

“I don’t want an apology from the police – but I would like them to admit they made a mistake in putting that claim in with no evidence.

At the hearing the panel did find that there was a history of selling alcohol, tobacco and vapes to children and suspended Mr Shah’s licence for three months.