LONDON: Indian nationals have emerged as the nationality with the largest percentage increase in convictions for sexual offences in the UK amid a wider surge in foreigners being sentenced for such crimes over the past four years in the country, according to an analysis of official British data by the Centre for Migration Control (CMC).

The think tank, citing UK Ministry of Justice figures, said convictions of Indian nationals rose by 257% between 2021 and 2024, even as overall foreign national convictions for sexual offences grew by 62% during the same period.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) data has been drawn from the Police National Computer (PNC).

The CMC analysis showed that sexual offence convictions involving Indians rose from 28 cases in 2021 to 100 in 2024, an increase of 72 cases. Pakistanis are at the bottom of the nationalities for sexual convictions as Nigerians (166% increase), Iraqis (160%), Sudanese (117%) and Afghans (115%) made up the other nationalities with the steepest rises. Bangladeshis and Pakistanis featured in the data with rise of 100% and 47% respectively.

The report also highlighted that Indians ranked third in serious crime convictions, with a 115% increase between 2021 and 2024. The number of such convictions reached 588 in 2024, up from 273 in 2021. “There were almost 75,000 non-summary convictions of foreign nationals between 2021 and 2024… showing a general pattern of increase,” the CMC noted.

The findings come weeks after UK Home Office data showed a sharp rise in Indian nationals held in detention, almost doubling in the past year. Indians also emerged in the data as the second-largest group to receive study visas (98,014) and the largest for work and tourist visas to the UK. Last month, India was included in the expanded list of countries from which foreign offenders will be deported immediately after sentencing, before their appeals are heard.

The nationalities with the highest number of convictions for sexual offences last year were Indians (100), Romanians (92), Poles (83), Pakistanis (56), Afghans (43), Nigerians (40), Sudanese (37), Bangladeshi (34) and Portuguese (33).

The MoJ said the data should be treated with caution. It was possible for an offender to have multiple nationalities listed on the PNC, although they were recorded according to their “first” or “primary” nationality. One individual could also be responsible for multiple offences. Convictions by offenders where there was no declared nationality were excluded from the analysis.

Number of sexual offence convictions by foreign nationals in 2024

According to the data, the number of sex offence convictions for foreign nationals rose by 62%, from 687 in 2021 to 1,114 in 2024, compared with a 39.3% rise for British nationals, from 4,409 to 6,142.

The seven nationalities that accounted for about three quarters of the Channel crossings last year — Afghans, Syrians, Iranians, Vietnamese, Eritreans, Sudanese and Iraqis — saw a 110% increase in the number of sexual offence convictions between 2021 and 2024.

The total number of non-summary convictions of foreign nationals increased by 19.6% between 2021 and 2024, from 17,417 to 20,826. The number of convictions of British nationals increased by 5.9%, from 138,307 to 146,511. That means the number of convictions increased at three times the rate of convictions of Britons.

The nationalities with the highest number of non-summary convictions in 2024 were Romanians (3,271), Albanians (2,150), Poles (1,869), Irish (1,105), Lithuanians (737), Indians (588), Iranians (508), Bulgarians (489), Portuguese (485) and Algerians (472).

A government spokesman said: “Any foreign national who commits these kind of sexual offences in our country will face the full force of the law, and be deported at the earliest opportunity. And thanks to the reforms in our border security bill, any asylum claims they make will also be denied. This Government has already removed almost 5,200 foreign national offenders in its first year in office, a 14% increase on the previous 12 months, and we will continue to crack down on any foreign nationals who come to this country and break our rules.”

• Trump calls US-India trade relationship ‘one sided’
• Believes they should have reduced tariffs years ago.
• “It’s getting late”, says Trump on Indian tariffs.

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Monday that India has offered to reduce its tariffs on US goods to zero, even as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was making public shows of solidarity with Chinese and Russian leaders in the face of trade pressure from Washington.

While calling the US relationship with India “one sided,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform: “They have now offered to cut their Tariffs to nothing, but it’s getting late. They should have done so years ago.”

The Indian Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to Trump’s comments, which follow the implementation of total duties as high as 50% on Indian goods that have raised questions about the future of the US-India relationship.

Trump’s remark came as Modi was in China for a summit of more than 20 leaders of non-Western countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a China-backed initiative given renewed impetus by Trump’s global tariff offensive.

At the summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping pressed his vision for a new global security and economic order that prioritizes the “Global South,” in a direct challenge to the US.

The US-India relationship has strengthened in recent years, including during Trump’s first term, given shared concerns about China’s growing power, but Trump threatened the tariffs on India after it refused to stop buying Russian oil in defiance of his efforts to end Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

In China, in an image designed to convey solidarity, Putin and Modi were shown holding hands as they walked jovially toward Xi before the summit opened. The three men stood shoulder-to-shoulder, laughing and surrounded by interpreters.

Beijing has used the summit to mend ties with New Delhi. Modi, visiting China for the first time in seven years, and Xi agreed on Sunday their countries are development partners, not rivals, and discussed ways to improve trade.

The US State Department and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the meetings in China.

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Monday called on pharmaceutical companies to justify the success of their drugs intended to treat Covid.

He said there is disagreement on whether the drugs saved lives.

“With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer, and I want it NOW,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I have been shown information from Pfizer, and others, that is extraordinary, but they never seem to show those results to the public.”

In his post, Trump urged drug companies to be more transparent about their results to “clear up this MESS.”

Last week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the latest round of Covid vaccines, but only for people at higher risk of severe illness. The three approved shots are made by Pfizer with German partner BioNTech, Moderna, and Novavax with Sanofi.

The president’s comments also come days after he fired Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez after she refused to resign. Four other top health officials at the CDC also announced they were quitting the agency last week, including Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

The leadership upheaval at the CDC follows a series of measures by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr to overhaul federal health agencies and change US immunisation policies. He has instituted mass firings, gutted a key government vaccine panel and canceled studies on mRNA shot technology.

In an email to agency staff on Thursday, Kennedy pledged to continue what he has described as a mission to restore trust to the agency, touting “significant progress” already.

Public health experts, physicians, researchers, as well as current and former CDC employees, have said that Kennedy’s approach as well as cuts to both spending and staff have already hobbled the agency, warning that matters will worsen if he is allowed to continue.

So far, Kenedy has faced relatively little resistance from the White House, and the president appears to have gone along with the push to oust Monarez. It was the White House that announced last this week that Trump fired her, even though the announcement was initially made by Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services.

But in the Monday post, Trump appears to be torn between Kennedy and his detractors. The president doesn’t appear to embrace Kennedy’s view that Covid vaccines were decidedly harmful.

Trump has previously touted the success of Operation Warp Speed, the government-backed effort to develop Covid countermeasures, including vaccines.

“I hope OPERATION WARP SPEED was as ‘BRILLIANT’ as many say it was. If not, we all want to know about it, and why???” he wrote of the initiative.