Three Members of Rochdale Grooming Gang Are Still Living in the Town Two Years After They Were Ordered to Be Deported
Danny Gallagher, Daily Mail, May 9, 2020
Three of the members of the Rochdale grooming gang now once again reside in the town where they abused girls as young as 12, it has been revealed.
The men are known to be back in the Greater Manchester town just two years after losing the right to stay in Britain.
Victims of the grooming gang have expressed their horror after learning the men who haunted them were back on the doorstep, despite a judge rejecting their appeals against their British citizenship being revoked.
The news was revealed by the Mirror, who one of the group’s victims told she felt ‘violated’ by their return.
One of the men, Abdul Rauf, 51, is a father of five, a taxi driver and a former teacher at a mosque. His sentence was six years for trafficking and sex with a girl, who was aged 15.
Another, Abdul Aziz, 49, carried the more sinister title of ‘the master’ and is a father of three. He was originally sentenced to nine years for trafficking and conspiracy to engage in sex with a child.
The third, Adil Khan, 50, was given eight years for conspiracy and trafficking a 13-year-old girl who fell pregnant.
All three men have served their sentences.
News of the men’s return became public knowledge after images surfaced on social media, with people in the Rochdale area sharing the information to friends and family.
One of the gang’s victims told the Mirror: ‘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.’
In 2017 the men had appealed against moves by the Government to strip them of their British citizenship.
But in 2018 their claims were dismissed on all grounds by the Upper Tribunal of the Immigration and Asylum Chamber.
The then home secretary Theresa May ruled in 2015 that all three men – who have dual British and Pakistani nationality – should have their names deleted from the roll of British citizens.
Lord Justice Sales said that what they and others did to vulnerable girls in Rochdale amounted to ‘serious organised crime’.
Gerald Clifton, the judge who jailed them at Liverpool Crown Court in May 2012, said victims were ‘raped callously, viciously and violently’.
As revealed by the Mail in June 2019, four of the group were still living in Britain, with no signs of any being prepared for deportation to Pakistan.
