An officer who was sacked after being accused of theft on a drunken night in Wimbledon out has accused the Metropolitan Police of discrimination because she suffers from PTSD after an attempted honour killing left her with a fractured spine.

The 38-year-old claimant, who for legal reasons is known only as P, was dismissed in 2012 after an incident in a Broadway nightclub, in which she was accused of stealing a pair of handbags.

Although no charges were ever brought, a police misconduct panel sacked the woman, after claiming that she had damaged the reputation of the Met.

Aged 20, P was taken to Pakistan and coerced into entering a forced marriage. She was “held captive” in a rural village for over a year, where she claimed to suffer mental and physical abuse.

She escaped with the help of a visiting English teacher, returning to the UK in 2003 and eventually becoming a police officer.

Her estranged husband sought to enter the country as her spouse some years later, but P was successful in having the marriage voided in a landmark High Court ruling.

But, just months later, she was attacked by two men at her home, suffering fractures to her spine after being thrown down the stairs - in what she claimed was an attempted honour killing.

She became increasingly fearful and after being diagnosed with PTSD, underwent counselling and started taking antidepressants.

During a night out at Po Na Na in September 2011, P got drunk and began acting “bizarrely”, emptying the contents of two handbags into sanitary bins in the toilets and behaving rudely towards the club’s door staff.

She was arrested two months later, though never charged and a police misconduct panel eventually accused her of gross misconduct and sacked her.

After her initial appeals were rejected, P took her case to the Supreme Court - which ruled that she had the right to contest the tribunal's decision in 2017.

Having consulted with a top psychologist from the Met, she was diagnosed with PTSD and started undergoing counselling and taking antidepressants.

In a written statement submitted to the new hearing at Central London Employment Tribunal, P said: “I would wake up in a pool of sweat after having nightmares and would stay up for the rest of the night.

“I was experiencing what I can only describe as a rollercoaster of emotions, extreme highs and lows.”

P was “completely shocked” when, on 11 November 2011, she was arrested on suspicion of theft.

She added: “My mobile phone was seized and my house was searched. There is no reasonable explanation whatsoever as to why.

“The handbag and purse were with their rightful owners. There was no complaint of theft and there was no intention to permanently deprive.”

While the CPS chose not to pursue charges against P, she was pulled before a misconduct panel, with an investigating officer’s report accusing her of exaggerating her drunkenness and developing “convenient memory loss”.

Aneeta Prem, an author and human rights campaigner who acted as an independent member of the panel, said: “Ultimately P had chosen to drink on the night in question, when she should not have done, particularly while on medication.

“My review of the CCTV evidence also suggested that P may not have been as drunk as she claimed to be, and certainly not so drunk as to have no memory of key events that night.

“In my opinion, it appeared to me that P was looking around and checking to see if she was being watched.This led me to believe she knew what she was doing.”

P’s former colleagues and friends added that they suspected she had stolen items before.

Her former housemate DC Sadia Hayat, who is currently assigned to the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, said: “There were other incidents where property went missing in P’s presence.

“I remember that P was out with a friend called Rebecca Tucker and other members of their team, and when she came home that night she said that Rebecca had lost her new camera.

“I was never present when property went missing, but now I wonder if that was because I wasn’t drinking at the time and so wouldn’t have been aware of what was going on around me.”

DC Jacqueline Anderson, who now works for Surrey Police, said that she had been present when property had gone missing in P’s presence.

In a statement, she told the tribunal: “When I look back some other things did not add up. P had somehow managed to save up enough money to put a deposit on a house in London.

“It may be that she had enough support from her family to do that, but given their relationship I found that difficult to believe.”

Jesse Crozier, counsel for the Met, said: “The panel reached the conclusion that you continued drinking while under medication and that you must bear the consequences of that decision.

“And you have accepted that when you were in Wimbledon you knew that you were on medication and you knew that the guidance was that you should not drink.

“The panel concluded that you did cause real, albeit limited, discredit to the police force, because [the staff at Po Na Na] had good reason to believe that a police officer had stolen two items from their premises.

“They didn’t believe that you had no recollection of what happened or that you were as drunk as you said you were.

“Finally they simply did not accept that your PTSD caused you to behave in this way. The actual discredit you caused is in itself wholly incompatible with you remaining a police officer.”

P admitted misconduct at the original hearing, but the panel determined that her actions amounted to gross misconduct - and sacked her on the spot.

The ex-copper said: “The decision to dismiss me was intimidating, humiliating and degrading. I felt that I was in a hostile environment.

“The panel did not give sufficient weight to my mental health conditions. They took a punitive approach which had a profound impact on my mental health which at that point was already fragile.”

The tribunal reserved judgement.