UK NRI mother says she is being prosecuted

An NRI woman facing one-year jail term in the UK for providing a false address to get her son admitted to a leading state school on Monday alleged persecution.

Mrinal Patel, 41 is the first person in the country to be taken to court for school application fraud, faces upto a year in prison or a 5,000 pounds fine if found guilty of using a false address to circumvent rules intended to ensure children to go schools within a certain catchment area.

Patel said she was living at the address at the time she made the application last year.

"Early last year I had some problems with my marriage so I moved in with my mother. I had left my husband and had no intention of coming back so I put down my mother's address as my own," she said.

"I had a lot going on and my mum was going to help me out. Pinner Park was just across the road and I wanted (Rhys) there so that there would at least be one stable thing in his life."

Patel, who works in the finance industry, admits using her mother's address as her own on the application form when trying to get her son Rhys into popular Pinner Park first School, in Gujarati-dominated Harrow, north-west London.

Her mother Mrudula, a pensioner, lives in a flat a short walk from Pinner Park, which is one of the most over-subscribed primary schools in the area, with about 430 applications for 90 places.