Offensive: Sadiq Khan, pictured right, is under pressure to sack senior aide Shueb Salar, left

Labour's candidate for London Mayor was last night under pressure to sack a senior aide who suggested the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby was faked.

Sadiq Khan faced questions about his judgment after hiring Shueb Salar despite him posting a series of offensive posts on Twitter.

Along with homophobic and sexist comments, Salar jokes about rape and murder, claims Bengali people ‘smell’ and said he thought the slaying of soldier Mr Rigby by extremists in 2013 may have been fabricated.

The messages began long before Mr Khan employed Salar as a speechwriter in November 2014 and continued afterwards.

A spokesman for the MP for Tooting, who is favourite to beat Conservative Zac Goldsmith to succeed Boris Johnson as Mayor, said Salar had been suspended pending an investigation.

However, Tory MPs questioned how he made it through the vetting procedure in the first place. Essex MP Priti Patel called for Salar to be sacked in a letter, saying: ‘Why not dismiss him immediately? By deciding to only suspend him, you are in effect suggesting that the offensiveness of these views are open to interpretation.’

A 2013 post by Salar the day after Mr Rigby was brutally hacked to death in the street in south-east London says: ‘I had the feeling the Woolwich killing was probably fake.’

It was followed by a link to a YouTube clip that has footage of killers Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale at the murder scene with commentaries questioning whether it was a hoax.

Salar’s anti-gay tweets include one which he said two men who were harassed for kissing on the Tube may have ‘deserved it’.

Others read: ‘Currently hating all you faggots who have finished uni’. Referring to women as ‘hoes’ [whores] or ‘bitches’, he says ‘treating a lady’ means ‘buying her a nice iron and extending the kitchen’.

Reversing the rags to riches tale of Cinderella would be ‘the story of a woman learning her place’, he added.

The sexist comments are particularly embarrassing as Mr Khan yesterday attended a special £30-a-head screening in London of the 2015 movie Suffragette, with all proceeds going ‘towards winning London for Labour in May’.

MP Priti Patel, pictured, called for Salar to be sacked in a letter, saying: ‘Why not dismiss him immediately?'

The event was billed as celebrating Mother’s Day and International Women’s Day with the comment ‘women’s equality is good for all’.

Mr Khan gave a short speech in which he described himself as a ‘feminist’ and said Labour would stand up for women’s rights.

However, Tory politicians expressed incredulity at Mr Khan’s failure to vet an employee with such vile opinions.

Pictured are a selection of tweets that Salar posted between 2012 and 2013, in which he makes sexist comments and says that he thought the killing of soldier Lee Rigby was 'probably fake'

Former police and criminal justice minister Damian Green said the mayoral candidate had shown a ‘completely extraordinary lack of care’.

‘I can’t believe that he would have known that he had said any of this stuff, so I can only assume he didn’t check anything about him before,’ he added.

Kingston and Surbiton MP James Berry said: ‘The most elementary of background checks would have revealed these messages.’

Here is a list of the offensive posts tweeted by Shueb Salar, which included sexist and homophobic messages

Leader of the Commons Chris Grayling told the Mail on Sunday: ‘They raise serious questions about the judgment of Sadiq Khan, who chose to employ this man, despite his views being public, on a Twitter account followed by Khan himself.’

Salar, 24, an amateur boxer who previously worked for a solicitor’s firm specialising in human rights, has moderated his comments since starting to work for Mr Khan.

But he continued marking other people’s tasteless comments as ‘favourites’. His Twitter account has now been shut down.