A taxi driver became obsessed with sister of Zac Goldsmith MP, Jemima Khan, and inundated her with more than 1,400 calls, texts and WhatsApp messages after she and her friends used his taxi, a court heard.

Hassan Mahmood, 27, of Waltham Forest, admitted to a charge of sexual harassment and became ‘obsessed’ with Khan because she was the ex-wife of former Pakistan cricket captain Imran Khan.

Judge Martin Edmunds QC sentenced him to eight weeks in prison, suspended for 18 months, at Isleworth Crown Court and said Mr Mahmood left her ‘increasingly frightened’ that he would visit her home.

He said: “She would ask family or friends to stay over and the seriousness of this is shown by the fact that she was planning to move house.

"It is a sadness that she delayed reporting you out of fear you would seek revenge.

"Harassment is a serious crime.

"Whether a person has a degree of celebrity or not, the unwanted attentions of an obsessive, a person to whom no encouragement has been given and who disregards the clearest requests to stop is both distressing and frightening.

"It intrudes on ordinary life so that people fear another phone call or another text."

Mahmood used 18 different phones to send the messages to Ms Khan, 43, who had apparently agreed to a selfie with him after he picked her and her friends up from a jazz club on June 16 last year.

He then subjected her to 203 text messages, made 1,182 phone calls and sent ‘loads of’ WhatsApp messages using 18 different mobile phones in the days following the event.

Some messages included him saying he ‘loved her’, wanted to be her friend, called her ‘mother’ and used a Pakistani phrase meaning ‘sister-in-law’.

Ms Khan called the police in July when he sent a message saying, “I’m missing you. Shall I come and see you today?”

It is said that Ms Khan left the calls for so long because she feared that if action was taken then Mr Mahmood would lose his job and potentially seek revenge, the court heard.

He apparently obtained Ms Khan’s phone number when she booked a ride through the Hailo app.

A victim statement read at a previous hearing, Khan, the sister of MP Zac Goldsmith, said: The incident has made me incredibly anxious at times. I would be home alone and he would call me several times and text repeatedly late at night.

"Sometimes he would send texts saying he would come to my house. That really frightened me."

In a further statement, she added: "I feel extremely vulnerable and scared as a single woman. As a result I'm planning to move house.

"He seems to have become increasingly unstable and unpredictable. I'm worried about what he will do."

Mahmood is said to have carried out behaviour for a year after his arranged marriage broke down while he suffered from depression.

He will also have to carry out 120 hours of unpaid work.