A British Indian landlord based in London has been stripped of his royal honour by King Charles III after being fined for renting out damp and squalid rooms.
Nirpal Singh Riat’s name was on an updated UK Cabinet Office list issued this month among those whose Order of the British Empire (OBE) has been annulled.
Riat, who was conferred the royal honour by the late Queen Elizabeth II in 2010 for “services to charity and to the Punjabi people”, was found to have brought the “honours system into disrepute”.
“The King has directed that the appointment of Nirpal Singh Riat to be an Officer of the Civil Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, dated 31 December 2010, shall be cancelled and annulled and that his name shall be erased from the Register of the said Order,” reads the Cabinet Office statement.
Riat, who denies some of the allegations levelled against him as “fabricated”, has been dubbed a rogue landlord after details of his business emerged in court around three years ago.
According to local media reports, the businessman now in his 70s was given one of the biggest fines in west London of 300,000 pounds (around Rs 3.8 crore) over illegally converting houses into flats and renting outbuildings to vulnerable people forced to live in "terrible conditions". There were also reports of a previous fine over an illegal property conversion.
The stripping of Riat’s honour follows a local councillor in Hounslow raising the matter with the Honours Forfeiture Committee.
The Honours Forfeiture Committee is an advisory committee under the UK Cabinet Office that reviews cases where a person with a British honour may have brought the honours system into disrepute.
The cancellation of a royal honour is rare and follows a similar move against another Indian-origin businessman in 2024. Lord Rami Ranger was stripped of his CBE conferred by the late Queen Elizabeth II in the New Year’s Honours list of December 2015 for services to British business and the Asian community after the Forfeiture Committee found that he had brought the “honours system into disrepute".
However, the British Indian peer challenged the revocation in court and earlier this month won the right to a judicial review of the annulment of his royal honour. His legal team is set to argue at a full hearing in the coming months that the stripping of his CBE was disproportionate and that due process had not been followed.
In the UK honours system, a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) ranks higher than an OBE.