ASIAN leaders today said the man at the centre of a fake marriage ring had brought great shame on East Lancashire's Asian communities.

They spoke out after Ismail Purbhai, 52, was jailed for six years for his part in the racket which stretched from Blackburn to Bombay.

And today it can be revealed that Purbhai was the man at the centre of a poison pen campaign against Blackburn MP Jack Straw.

The self-styled community leader was well known in Asian communities for 20 years -- and is no stranger to controversy.

In 1991 he was given a two-months jail sentence for a smear campaign against the Labour Party before an election.

He admitted at Preston Crown Court that he had paid for and distributed two leaflets urging people not to vote for the party when he had no authority to do so under election rules.

He was also jailed for two weeks after accusing a Labour councillor of taking bribes in the run-up to the 1990 borough elections.

In 1992 Purbhai, of Dartford Close, Blackburn, was ordered to pay £10,000 in damages after he accused the then county council leader Louise Ellman of being racist.

In September 1993 father-of-three Purbhai was fined £300 under the Representation of the People Act for a leaflet which accused Blackburn MP, and now Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, of being "racist, a mobster and a cowboy".

An attempt to overturn the conviction imposed by South Ribble magistrates failed at the High Court in London in 1995.

Purbhai's name was first linked publicly to the marriage racket on September 3, 2000.

Rather than shy away from the limelight he gave an interview at the time and said: "I do not know what they are talking about. I have absolutely no idea what is going on.

"I have certainly never tried to arrange a marriage. It is all lies. I am talking to my solicitor today."

In truth, he was fully aware of what they were talking about -- police had raided his home almost two years earlier in a bid to find proof about the racket, detectives said.

The information they had found there, and at the home of Ibrahim Patel -- described as the "chief lieutenant" by Judge Boulton when he was sentenced last month -- set them on the trail which was to expose the fake marriage scam and result in seven people, including Purbhai, being prosecuted.

He was arrested and charged in April last year, and a month later, solicitor Bob Pickles, well-known locally, was also arrested and charged in connection with the scam after giving Purbhai embossed blank immigration application-support documents which should not be embossed until filled in.

Speaking about the effect on the Asian community of the fake marriage scam -- which involved setting up fake marriages to get illegal immigrants residency in Britain -- former Burnley mayor Coun Rafique Malik said: "It is a matter of shame for anybody involved in illegal practices and it is more a matter of shame that somebody from the Asian community has been involved in something which the whole Asian community abhors.

"The more people like this who are exposed and dealt with is better for the community at large and for race relations."

And Blackburn council Hussain Akhtar said: "His actions have brought great shame on our community and it is something we must not dwell on.

"We would urge people not to think bad of us because of him."