A SUPERMARKET boss who raped a drugged woman in her home only weeks before he was due to get married was jailed yesterday for eight years.

Majid Malik was told by a judge that he had taken advantage of the victim’s state and attacked her in her bed while he was a guest in her house.

Malik said he had no recollection of the night, and could not explain his memory loss – but was accused of feigning it to avoid difficult questions.

The 30-year-old said he was shocked when he woke the following morning in the woman’s bed, and he fled the house in panic.

It was alleged during his trial that he later called the woman and apologised for being “a naughty boy” although he refused to elaborate when asked.

The victim’s memory of the events was patchy, and tests later showed she had traces of an unusual hypnotic drug – niaprazine – in her hair follicles.

She told the jury she went to bed feeling unwell and remembered seeing Malik’s silhouette at her door before he climbed into her bed next to her.

She told the jury that she repeatedly said no, but was unable to prevent her attacker raping and touching her because her body felt like a “lead weight”.

Malik, of Park Crescent, Darlington, who was the manager of the Tesco store in Northallerton, North Yorkshire, was convicted of rape and assault by penetration.

He was ordered to sign on the sex offenders’ register for life and was told by Judge John Walford that it was “regrettable”

to see him in court.

“I am prepared to accept that this was an offence wholly out of character,” he said.

“You are someone who has been hard-working and achieving.

“What induced you to behave as you did remains something of a mystery because of the amnesia that you claim to have experienced.

“I put it like that because there has been no medical or scientific explanation for why it was that you should have had this period of temporary amnesia.”

His barrister, Adrian Dent, told the court there was little he could say in mitigation because Malik refused to accept he was guilty of the crimes.

“It is a very sad state of affairs to see somebody of this calibre being sentenced for such serious offences,” Mr Dent told Judge Walford.

“I would ask Your Honour to sentence him on the basis that whatever he did was an incident of gross misjudgement and an isolated one.”

Shaun Dodds, prosecuting, said the drug, used on mainland Europe, primarily in France, to sedate unruly children, is not available in the UK.

He accepted there was no evidence to show who had administered it, but said Malik must have been aware of the woman’s debilitated state.