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The predator: Rohall Spall
The wife: Aneela Spall says she will stand by her husband
A businessman caught spiking a woman's drink as they ate in a restaurant has been jailed for two years.
Rohail Spall, 39, was spotted by a waiter as he dropped a date-rape drug into his victim's wine.
He had already asked restaurant staff to keep her wine glass topped up as he wanted to "knock her out" and have sex with her.
Police later found the married father of four had a stash of hundreds of Xanax pills - a strong sedative with effects similar to Rohypnol.
Prosecuters are now considering whether to challenge the sentence.
The woman, who cannot be named, was said to be devastated after he was jailed for just two years.
He may be free in just over three months because the length of time he has spent in jail already.
A Crown Prosecution Service spokeswoman said: "We are considering referring the case to the Attorney General's office as an unduly lenient sentence."
Inner London Crown Court heard Spall met his victim in a bar on Canary Wharf in the east of the capital last June. They drank tequila shots before he took her in his chauffeured Mercedes to the Fish! restaurant south of the Thames at Borough Market.
In the back of the car Spall tried to kiss the woman, a 28-year-old banker, and made sexually suggestive comments which she rebuffed.
Once at the restaurant, he insisted she drink red rather than white wine, presumably to mask the drug he planned to put in her glass.
He repeatedly asked her to spend the night with him but she refused.
When she went to the lavatory, head waiter Kevin Murphy, 30, saw Spall drop a tablet into her drink which made the wine fizz.
Mr Murphy took the woman to one side and told her what had happened. Horrified, she called the police.
When the drink was sent for analysis it was found to contain Xanax and Spall was arrested.
At his trial in December last year he claimed he put the drug into the woman's glass by mistake and had intended to take it himself.
But the jury convicted him of administering a substance with
intent to commit a sexual offence.
Sentencing Spall, Judge Colin Smith QC said: "When you were having a meal you continued to press drink upon her and indeed said to the waiter at one point you wanted him to provide her with something to knock her out.
"You put a Xanax tablet in her wine glass in a deliberate attempt to weaken her capacity to resist any sexual advances you might make towards her.
"You were thwarted in this underhand behaviour by the waiter who had seen what you had done and immediately informed the victim.'
Spall, originally from Pakistan, showed no emotion as the judge told him: "The courts must protect women, in this case, a young lady, against the dangers of this sort of unscrupulous conduct."
He added: "I have to regard your behaviour as a determined effort to get your way to some kind of sexual overture to the complainant by underhand means, irrespective of her wishes in the matter."
His victim, sitting a few feet away in court, later criticised what she saw as a soft sentence.
"I'm not very happy. I didn't know what to expect, but for him to get just two years is disgusting," she said.
The woman said she first met Spall in a bar last summer when he offered to buy drinks for her and a group of friends.
"He seemed like a nice guy. I wasn't that interested but he called numerous times. I thought, Why not? I arranged to meet him for a drink."
That night, she said, has left her paranoid and reluctant to go out.
"If I had drunk that drink I would have been raped," she said.
"It makes me feel horrible. I can't put it into words but I feel very lucky as well."
Mr Murphy, originally from Northern Ireland, is to be nominated for a police commendation for his actions.
Spall's wife Aneela, who lives in Ilford, East London, with their four children between nine and 15, was adamant that she would stand by her husband.
"He would never have done this. He's not that kind of man," she said.
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