A sexual predator who claimed he molested teenage girls because he was fasting during Ramadan and “did not know what he was doing” has been jailed for three years.

Shamsul Islam, 33, now faces deportation after he has served his sentence.

The Pakistani national of Wilmington Gardens, Barking, sidled up to girls – the youngest aged 15 – on empty buses and trains in east London last summer.

His victims were left traumatised by the attacks, with one saying she still feels physically sick if she uses public transport.

Shamsul Islam, 33, admitted four counts of sexual assault during a hearing at Snaresbrook Crown Court on Monday.

His victims included a woman who he inappropriately touched on a C2C train from Barking to London Fenchurch Street in July.

He waited until the train emptied at West Ham before rubbing her arm, hip and stomach. When subsequently interviewed, he claimed that he couldn’t remember the incident and “blamed Ramadan” for causing him to forget.

Islam’s second victim was a child who he stared at at a bus stop in Hornchurch before sitting next to her, even though the bus was largely empty.

Just ninety minutes later he made his next attack. When a fellow passenger intervened, he jiggled his own breasts as an insult.

His final attack involved squeezing a woman’s breast on a bus in Romford. When she challenged him, he said he was sorry and that he did not know what he was doing because he was fasting.

Sentencing him, Judge Sheelagh Canavan described him as a “serial, sexual pervert”.

“Your devotion to your religion is only convenient to you when it gives you an excuse for your sexual misconduct,” she said. “They [the victims] are the people who have to live with what you did to them. They all described themselves as having lasting impacts from what you did.

“You are not a national of this country, and the sooner you are removed from the country the better.”