Three grooming gang members ‘back in town’
TRIO STILL LIVING IN REGION DESPITE LOSING DEPORTATION APPEAL
THREE members of the Rochdale grooming gang are ‘back in town’ – two years after losing the right to stay in Britain.
Qari Abdul Rauf, Abdul Aziz and Adil Khan are all still living in the town a decade after preying on girls as young as twelve, the Mirror reports.
They were among nine men convicted in 2012 of a catalogue of serious sex offences against vulnerable victims in Rochdale and Heywood.
As the only groomers to have dual UK-Pakistani citizenship, they were at risk of being deported back to Pakistan – but none of them appear to have been deported or are facing deportation.
That is despite the Home Office saying in 2015 it intended to remove their British citizenship and the men losing an appeal against the decision in 2018.
A victim has reported that the abusers are still living in Rochdale today, a year after the M.E.N. reported that victims were still bumping into their attackers.
After spotting pictures on social media showing Rauf, 51, in the town, she said: “I thought Theresa May had organised his deportation, so how come he’s still here?
“I feel violated to know he’s living near me – in the same area where he hunted for girls like me.
“It’s a total betrayal of grooming victims that he’s allowed to stay.”
Dad-of-three Abdul Aziz, 49 – who was referred to as ‘The Master’ by the gang – and Adil Khan, 50, also live nearby after being freed from jail, the Mirror reports.
Former taxi driver Aziz played a ‘leading role’ in the grooming gang.
He regularly took his young victim to different flats around Rochdale, where she was plied with cannabis and vodka and coerced into sex with men who paid him cash.
Jailed for nine years in May 2012, he was released in December 2015
I feel violated to know he’s living near me – in the same area where he hunted for girls like me A victim
after serving three years and seven months.
Rauf, a father-of-five, trafficked a 15-year-old girl for sex, driving her to secluded areas to have sex with her in his taxi and ferry her to a flat in Rochdale where he and others had sex with her.
He was jailed for six years and released in November 2014 after serving two years and six months of his sentence.
Khan got a girl, 13, pregnant but denied he was the father. He then
met another girl, 15, and trafficked her to others using violence when she complained.
He was sentenced to eight years and was released in 2016.
Shabir Ahmed, who was known as ‘Daddy’ in the gang, is still serving a 22-year jail term for rape.
In 2016, then-home secretary Theresa May ruled it would be ‘conducive to the public good’ to deprive the four of the right to remain in the UK.
They then fought, and lost, a long legal battle against deprivation of UK citizenship, losing a final Court of Appeal ruling in July 2018.
Eight judges, including the Master of the Rolls Lord Justice Sales, heard their case and upheld rulings all four should lose UK citizenship rights.