DC Zain Nadir   played by TJ Ramini

First appearance    # 313 (26/05/05)        

Extremely driven and ambitious, Zain Nadir was a real danger man; he liked to live life on the edge. His undercover work gave him an enormous buzz; something he often had trouble coming down from. He was certainly not one to shy away from confrontation, although he wasn't aggressive. A natural chameleon, he fitted into any professional or social situation. He had a great rapport with most people he met and was popular in the station. Zain sometimes found it difficult to avoid slipping back into old habits and his natural ability to invent stories from his past was something that he would easily indulge, even when not in undercover mode. His previous work meant that he was used to working alone and largely on his own terms. He subsequently found it difficult to adjust to working as a team. Zain rose up quickly through the ranks. After two years on the beat at Stoke Newington, he went straight into CID where he did two years as a DC, before being offered SO10, covert operations. He took to undercover work like a duck to water; it suited his independent, solitary style of policing. He'd been undercover for four years, and Sun Hill was his third assignment.

Second generation British Muslim, Zain's father was an engineer, approaching retirement. He had three brothers and three sisters, one of whom died in her teens from a drugs overdose. Their father worked away a lot, and so, being the eldest son, Zain was given the status of man of the house from an early age. Being such a large family, his mother often gave him the responsibility for his siblings’ actions. Because of this, he was forced to grow up quickly and he soon became a well respected and well liked member of his community and peer group. His father had wanted Zain to follow in his footsteps by going into engineering, but Zain was never as interested in manual labour! He was more for thinking with his head...

Following a massive undercover operation in which he was posing as a bent officer to smash a drugs smuggling ring, Zain went native and fell for the female prime suspect in a big way. When a struggle between them resulted in the accidental death of PC Harman, it wasn't long before Sun Hill officers uncovered Zain's involvement and he was duly arrested.