A senior Tory MP has said the former minister who claimed she was sacked for her "Muslimness", "is not obviously Muslim".
Michael Fabricant MP for Lichfield in Staffordshire has said Nusrat Ghani's accusation "stinks" and he believes the timing of her claim is "interesting".
Ms Ghani told the Sunday Times she was sacked as transport minister in 2020 as a Government whip had said her faith was "making colleagues uncomfortable".
She considered quitting politics after the whip said her "Muslimness was raised as an issue" at a Downing Street meeting [in March 2020].
The whip also said her "Muslim woman minister status was making colleagues feel uncomfortable", and questioned her loyalty to the Party.
Since she spoke out on Saturday night, Downing Street hit back and claimed Boris Johnson had met with Ms Ghani after her claims and he encouraged her to make a formal complaint.
Mr Fabricant told LBC that "it's open season on the whips office but open season on Boris Johnson" to get him to resign.
"Prejudice of any kind in modern Britain is pretty pathetic. It was pathetic 100 years ago, it's even more pathetic now when this sort of thing happens," he told Andrew Pierce on the radio station.
"But, you know, ministers they come and they go, sometimes it's because you want to refresh the ministerial team. Sometimes it's because they were useless sometimes because they're just average and mediocre and you want to put somebody else.
"I think the whole thing actually stinks. The accusation being made by Nus Ghani. I mean, I have to say that someone had said it's because she's a Muslim. I mean, she's hardly someone who's obviously a Muslim.
"I had no idea what religion she is."
Mr Fabricant then references the Labour MP Keith Vaz who is also of Asian descent and highlights that he was a Goan Christian.
He has been cheerleading for the PM throughout partygate and as more and more scandal hits the Conservative party.
Last week, Mr Fabricant claimed allegations of bullying and intimidation from the whips office was “nonsense”.
“If I reported every time I had been threatened by a whip or if a whip reported every time I had threatened them, the police wouldn’t have any time to conduct any other police work,” Mr Fabricant said.
