A WOMAN used by Hampshire police to spearhead an honour-based violence campaign but jailed after making up a story she had been gang-raped had her prison sentence cut by appeal judges.

Syeda Ali was jailed for three years at Southampton Crown Court in July after admitting perverting the course of justice and 16 other fraud offences.

The 31-year-old mother of three, who concocted a story of abduction and rape by three men, helped police officers drive an awareness campaign about the crime.

Court of Appeal judges in London said the sentence was too long and cut it to two years due to “exceptional circumstances”.

Loans agent Ali raised the suspicions of her employer by submitting applications for prospective clients for cash loans in 2009.

It was discovered that 16 of the applications included false details, including some in which the prospective client had not asked for a loan at all.

If she had succeeded in her fraud, the loss to her employers would have been £7,650 but the scam was nipped in the bud.

When a manager went to her home in Sandown Road, Shirley, she burst into tears and told how she had been bundled into a car and driven to a house in Derby Road where she was raped by a gang of men.

Three men were ultimately arrested over the allegations and spent weeks under a cloud of suspicion, the appeal said.

She later retracted her statement and police discovered the men accused all had alibis.

Investigations found that there was no way that her rape claim could have been true and the sentencing judge said it was “extremely difficult” to believe anything she said.

However, her lawyers argued her personal circumstances as a single mother with four failed marriages behind her, meant the sentence should be lesser.

Giving the judgement, Mr Justice Mackay said Ali’s groundless accusation against three named men had left them in “the gravest jeopardy”, facing possible five-year jail terms.

But he said Ali’s “social position”

and “personal family mitigation”

allowed the judges to cut her total sentence to two years, of which she will serve half before release on licence.