A father who posed as a taxi driver and then molested a woman passenger has been jailed for 18 months.

Obaydor Rahman gave the victim a lift in the early hours in his BMW to make extra money but then groped her during the journey from Maidstone to Gravesend.

A judge told the 27-year-old chef: "This was a prolonged incident involving a vulnerable young woman.

"It was a breach of trust since you were posing as a taxi driver and had her in your vehicle under your control."

The woman had phoned for a taxi to go home after leaving a nightclub in Maidstone.

When Rahman's car pulled up in the High Street she gave her name and asked him if the cab was for her.

He said it was and asked where she was going. She told him, adding she only had £5 but would pay the rest when they arrived.

She sat behind him. He drove towards the A229 but stopped in a layby next the town’s library.

“He had been addressing her as ‘babe’ repeatedly,” prosecutor Andrew Forsyth told a jury at Maidstone Crown Court in March.

“He turned around and grabbed the inside of her right leg behind her knee.

“You were not a taxi driver. Worse was to come because during the journey you touched her on the legs and thighs under her skirt. It was not consensual" - Judge Charles Macdonald QC

“He rubbed her knee and swept his hand underneath her skirt. She pushed his hand away and told him to get off. He said: ‘Don’t be like that babe.’

“She told him to get her home. He put his hand on her leg and tried to move it up her skirt. Again, she pushed his hand away.

“He constantly reached back, touching her leg trying to get his hand up her skirt throughout the journey.”

When they arrived at her home she told him to wait while she went to get the money. She awoke her parents and told them what had happened.

Her father went outside and as he approached the car, Rahman drove off. He noted the make and model and took a partial registration number.

Rahman, of Hazlitt Drive, Maidstone, denied fraud by false representation and sexual assault, but was convicted.

His name will appear on the sex offenders’ register for 10 years.

The court heard Rahman had applied to be a private hire taxi driver but was not authorised to take paying passengers.

He posed as a cabbie because he was in debt, said his lawyer. He was otherwise a “family man, a caring man and a respectful man”.

Judge Charles Macdonald QC said Rahman remained unable to accept the jury’s guilty verdicts.

“You were not a taxi driver,” he said. “Worse was to come because during the journey you touched her on the legs and thighs under her skirt. It was not consensual.”

The judge added there was nothing to justify suspending the sentence.