INDIANORIGIN MEN AMONG UK’S GROOMING GANGS: REPORT

LONDON: A report on grooming of young and vulnerable women in the United Kingdom has identified people of Indian descent as among those who plied them with drugs and alcohol for sex, and have been convicted and jailed.

The report is based on a review of a police operation called Sanctuary that saw 18 people jailed in Newcastle, north England in October 2017. Nearly 700 victims have been identified in the Northumbria police area.

Members of similar Asian gangs were previously convicted in other parts of the UK.

“In response to questions after the Newcastle trials, the police confirmed that the defendants were mainly not white but came from a diverse range of backgrounds including Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indian, Iranian, Iraqi, Kurdish, Turkish, Albanian and Eastern European”, the report released on Friday said.

In the case of incidents in Newcastle, the report added: “(All) appear to come from a non-white, predominantly Asian/british Minority Ethnic culture or background”.

In 2017, research by counterextremism think-tank Quilliam Foundation found that of 264 offenders convicted for grooming offences between 2005 and 2017, 84% were of Asian heritage, mostly Pakistani; 8% were black and 7% were white.

The report said that the material it gathered and analysed illustrated “the calculated and persistent determination of perpetrators over a long period to exploit women and girls through horrific acts of abuse.”