Rochdale grooming gang members could finally be deported to Pakistan
Rochdale grooming gang member who raped children and got a 13-year-old girl pregnant fights deportation from UK back to Pakistan moaning he is ‘surviving on benefits and has been treated like a political football’
- Adil Khan, 51, and Qari Abdul Rauf, 52, will hear deportation appeal late this year
- Two men were part of the Rochdale grooming gang who were convicted in 2012
- Khan got a 13-year-old girl pregnant then used violence to traffic a 15-year-old
- Rauf had sex with a 15-year-old girl in his taxi and later shared her with others
- Police said up to 47 girls could have been targeted and groomed by the group
A member of the notorious Rochdale grooming gang who got a 13-year-old girl pregnant has protested his deportation back to Pakistan by claiming he is barely surviving on benefits and has been treated ‘like a political football’.
Adil Khan, 51 had previously been told he will be sent back to Pakistan for the public good, after he was part of a gang convicted of a catalogue of serious sex offences in May 2012.
For two years from early 2008, girls as young as 12 were plied with alcohol and drugs and gang-raped in rooms above takeaway shops and ferried to different flats in taxis where cash was paid to use the girls.
Khan and Qari Abdul Rauf – who can still move freely around Rochdale – were among nine Asian men convicted for sex offences against vulnerable girls in 2012. Police fear as many as 47 victim may have been groomed by the gang.
Since release from jail they have fought a long legal battle against deportation, mounting multiple legal challenges and appeals, spanning seven years before 11 different judges, on the grounds that deportation would interfere with their human rights.
Khan – who claims benefits after the Home Office removed his driving licence from him – had said he had renounced his Pakistani citizenship, meaning his exile from Britain which would make him ‘stateless’ and should prevent his deportation.
Failure to deport any of the gang has led to widespread anger in Rochdale, where victims realised they had been living alongside their recently-released tormentors.
A string of Home Secretaries have also come under fire after being accused of failing to act after members of the group were ordered to be deported in 2015.
But now both Khan and Rauf will finally hear if they can remain in the UK after a date for their deportation case was set for later this year.
Adil Khan (pictured) was told he will be deported from the UK for the public good after being were part of the notorious Rochdale grooming gang convicted of a catalogue of serious sex offences against young girls
52-year-old Abdul 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
Khan told an immigration hearing on Wednesday they had been treated like a ‘political football’ and he could not afford to travel to London to hear his final appeal in June.
He got a 13-year-old girl pregnant, but denied he was the father, then met another girl, 15, and trafficked her to others using violence when she complained.
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, before returning to Rochdale to his wife and five children.
The main victim of the sex-ring gang, known as Girl A, previously slammed the Government for its failure to kick the convicted criminals out of the country and demanded an explanation from the Home Secretary.
The 29-year-old, previously told the Sun: ‘We were told they would be kicked out of the country. Knowing that had been done would have been a huge help for all of us in trying to rebuild our lives.
‘But instead we’re still haunted by the paedophiles who raped and trafficked us. Every day we run the risk of bumping into them.’
The Rochdale grooming gang’s abuse was dramatised in a BBC programme called Three Girls (above). Khan told an immigration tribunal hearing: ‘We have not committed that big a crime’
Khan and Rauf were among four of the gang with dual UK-Pakistani citizenship, so liable to be stripped of UK citizenship and deported, after 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.
The pair, along with another man, Abdul Aziz, then fought, and lost, a long legal battle against the deprivation order, losing a final Court of Appeal ruling in 2018.
Both men listened via a Mirpuri translator to the First Tier Immigration Tribunal hearing, held on a videolink, on Wednesday where a final date was set to hear their appeal against deportation.
Home Office lawyers told the hearing at Taylor House, London, the case had taken a ‘very long time’ and it is in the public interest to deport both men, ‘as soon as possible’.
Khan said he is unable to write and does not understand English, and was given extra time to gather evidence and statements to support his case.
Khan and Rauf are now appealing against the decision by current Home Secretary Priti Patel (pictured above, on May 23 this year) to deport them
Asked about his attendance at his appeal hearing, he said: ‘I don’t have enough money to eat.
‘For the last three years I have been surviving on children’s benefits, there’s no way I can afford it, to get to London.
‘I would just like to be protected from the football that we have been made of, by the politicians.’
Judge Charlotte Welsh granted an application for anonymity for the lawyers representing Rauf, who is legally aided, that they should not be named in any report of the hearing.
An appeal hearing has been set for June 22.
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