In a major relief for Tory peer Lord Rami Ranger, an employment tribunal in Watford dismissed a £673,000 claim made against him and his former company Sun Mark by a former employee, reports said.
Employment appeal judge Hyams ruled that the former employee, Ramandeep Kaur, had acted dishonestly and destroyed crucial evidence, including the phone recording covertly made against Lord Ranger, the notebook and the second phone, during the hearing on January 9 and 10.
The judge described Kaur's conduct as 'plainly scandalous, unreasonable and vexatious'.
According to a report in the Times of India, the claim was centred on a phone call on October 5, 2018, in which she alleged that the Tory peer made derogatory remarks to her, and a notepad which contained recorded events in connection with her claim.
That recording of the conversation, which took place in Punjabi, was made without the knowledge or consent of Lord Ranger.
Kaur alleged that during the phone call Lord Ranger called her a prostitute and said that he would kill her.
However, the tribunal found specifically that those things were not said by the peer.
“We do not find that Lord Ranger threatened to kill the Claimant. … He did not call her a prostitute. The allegation that those things were said was based on the fact that they were included in a translation of the recording of the conversation of 5 October 2018 which was made by a company called Atlas Translations Limited (“Atlas”)," the judge was quoted as saying.
Following a court order on 24 April 2020, an independent translation of the conversation was made which failed to prove Kaur's cllaims.
The former employee told the tribunal that she had broken the mobile phone into pieces and threw it into the river in Hayes as it contained intimate pictures of her and her fiancé.
"In our religion and culture we are not allowed to have physical relationships before marriage. If my fiancé had withdrawn from getting married or I had, he could have leaked those photos," she was quoted as saying in media reports.
She added that the other crucial evidence, the notepad, was burnt by her husband as he was 'upset by its contents'.
The judge termed her claims 'nonsense and implausible'. He observed that she either lied or she destroyed them on purpose fearing a forensic inspection in the future.
The judge said that Lord Ranger may have been provoked in the call and a fair hearing is impossible without retrieving the whole phone conversation recording.
Following the judgement, claims for unfair dismissal and victimisation were withdrawn.
Meanwhile, Sun Mark board welcomed the judgement saying that it is pleased with the right outcome to the case.
“After four difficult years of defending our position, we are pleased that the employment tribunal has come to the right decision by dismissing and striking out the entire claim for £673,000 by the claimant Ramandeep Kaur, against Lord Rami Ranger,” said Harmeet Ahuja, CEO of Sun Mark in a statement.
“The company, chairman and directors take their responsibilities as an employer very seriously; we consider our company to be a Sun Mark family-run enterprise. The last four years have taken an unspeakable toll on The Ranger and Sun Mark family.
“The Judge rightly concluded in respect of the destruction of key evidence that her (Mrs Kaur’s) deliberate destruction of those things, or lying in saying that she had destroyed them, was intended to prevent the respondents and the tribunal from considering further material which could have affected the outcome of the proceedings in a significant way."
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