A POLICE officer who drove off after a car crash leaving two women and a child injured has been told he can keep his job, an internal disciplinary hearing has ruled.

PC Tariq Mahmood, who was driving without insurance, tried to persuade his girlfriend and sister to lie for him in an attempt to cover his tracks.

At a hearing at Bolton Magistrates' Court in March, the 30-year-old officer was fined £200 for failing to stop, £200 for driving without insurance and £175 for not reporting the accident. He was banned from driving for a year.

PC Mahmood blamed his behaviour on the trauma he suffered after the murder of his mother more than three years before the crash. He pleaded guilty to all the charges.

The accident occurred in October last year when PC Mahmood, who joined Greater Manchester Police in 1994, was driving his red Alfa Romeo. He was involved in a collision with a Peugeot 106 as he pulled into a petrol station near his home in Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester.

Even though the two women and the child in the Peugeot needed hospital treatment, the officer fled the scene.

Greater Manchester Police today confirmed that PC Mahmood was being re-posted after the offence.