"You show absolutely no remorse"
A former Metropolitan Police officer has been jailed for 21 months for groping a colleague’s breasts while she slept.
Sijanta Thapa was found guilty of sexually assaulting the woman in 2020 when he crept into her bedroom and crawled into her bed following a drinks party.
The 32-year-old quit the Met Police in 2025 in disgrace ahead of a misconduct hearing that found he groped another woman’s breasts outside London’s Heaven nightclub in January 2024.
On October 3, 2020, Thapa and the victim had attended a mutual friend’s house for a drinks party.
The victim, who was also a police officer, allowed Thapa to stay at her flat to save him from a lengthy taxi journey in the early hours.
Another colleague had driven them home, and the woman left Thapa in her living room with the television remote, expecting him to let himself out after a few hours and catch a train.
She later woke to find Thapa lying behind her in bed, with his right arm wrapped around her.
Initially, she gave him the benefit of the doubt, believing he might simply be acting in a friendly manner after their evening together, and went back to sleep.
However, she subsequently awoke to discover Thapa fondling her bare breast after he had unbuttoned her dress and pushed aside her bra.
The woman pushed him away and ordered him out of her bedroom. Thapa later left the flat.
In a statement to the court, the victim said the assault had shattered her “sense of safety” and claimed she was “punished” at work after reporting the incident in 2023.
She added: “I had to go to counselling and trauma therapies on and off to deal with the traumatic nightmares and complete lack of any sense of safety and security, particularly at home.”
Sentencing Thapa, Judge Alice Robinson said: “You show absolutely no remorse and continue to deny the offence. This was not a minor sexual assault.”
The judge also referred to a separate incident in January 2024, in which Thapa was found by a police misconduct panel to have groped another woman’s breasts outside London’s Heaven nightclub.
Thapa, who was formerly part of the Metropolitan Police’s Central West command unit, had faced criminal prosecution over the incident after CCTV captured him pulling the woman onto his lap. However, the case was abandoned at trial.
The misconduct hearing was told that the woman had danced with Thapa and briefly kissed him before he led her to a bench, pulled her onto his lap and placed his hands on her breasts.
CCTV footage captured the incident before the woman pulled away and rushed to find her friends.
One of her friends said the woman was crying, visibly distressed and repeatedly asking for help, telling the hearing she had said “please help me”.
Security staff at Heaven intervened and detained Thapa, who claimed that the encounter had been consensual.
The woman later told police: “This has left me feeling terrible. An unknown male grabbed my boobs when I didn’t want him to.”
During a police interview, Thapa suggested he had “implied consent” to touch the woman and claimed she had been “grinding” against his lap.
However, the misconduct panel concluded that he had been lying.
