A member of the notorious Rochdale grooming gang has told a judge that he should not be deported back to Pakistan because his son needs a role model.
Adil Khan, 51, and Qari Abdul Rauf, 52, have been told they will be sent back to Pakistan for the good of the British public, after both were 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.
Since release from jail on licence in 2016, they have fought a long legal battle against deportation – mounting multiple legal challenges and appeals – spanning several years on the grounds that deportation would interfere with their human rights.
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.
Khan appeared at a final deportation hearing on Wednesday to argue he should not be deported, where Judge Charlotte Welsh asked him how his son might be affected if he was deported from the UK.
Khan, speaking through a Miripuri interpreter, replied: ‘As you know, the father figure is very important in every culture in the world, to be a role model for the child, to tell him or her right from wrong.’
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.
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.