Teen wins 'substantial damages' after Lancashire Police wrongly linked him to firework attack on TikTok video
A teenager has received “substantial damages” after Lancashire Constabulary admitted seriously defaming him in a TikTok post that wrongly linked him to dangerous anti-social behaviour.
Mr Justice Nicklin heard at the Royal Courts of Justice that police had apologised to Mubashir “Bashir” Ali Ahmed after a force-made video - seen more than three million times - falsely implied he had attacked a patrol car.
The court was told that Bashir, then aged 17, had attended a Lancashire police station in January 2022 where his image was captured on routine CCTV equipment.
Lancashire Constabulary later posted a TikTok video on November 3, 2023 showing a hooded offender throwing a firework at a police vehicle before cutting to footage of Bashir inside the station.
Captions suggested the two clips were connected, while music mocked the teen with the lyric “you look so dumb right now” and text implied he had been arrested for the dangerous behaviour.
In reality, Bashir was not the offender in the firework-throwing footage, and he had never been charged with nor convicted of any crime arising from the incident.
On November 13, 2023, Lancashire Constabulary acknowledged the video had been uploaded due to a failure in its quality-assurance procedures but Bashir felt this response was inadequate.
He instructed solicitor Mark Lewis of Patron Law, whose team argued the post was both seriously defamatory and an unlawful misuse of Bashir’s private information.
The Chief Constable has now accepted the allegations were wholly false, apologised formally in court, deleted the video and agreed to pay Bashir substantial damages.
Mark Lewis said he was pleased to have secured justice, adding that serious false accusations against young people inevitably carry a very high personal and legal cost.
A spokesman for Lancashire Police said: “We sincerely apologise for the distress caused to Mr Muhammed Mubashir Ali Ahmed as a result of the publishing of this video. As soon as we received the complaint, the video was reviewed and removed.
“We accept it should not have been published.
“Since then, we have thoroughly reviewed and improved our quality assurance processes, with staff receiving training on a regular basis.”