UK Weighs Legal Changes to Deport Rochdale Grooming Gang Ringleader

London — The British government is expected to propose legal changes aimed at enabling the deportation of Rochdale grooming gang ringleader Shabir Ahmed to Pakistan, according to local media reports.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is considering whether to introduce the changes through fast-tracked legislation or as an amendment to the Immigration and Asylum Bill.

Ahmed, 73, was released from prison last week after serving 14 years for rape and sexual abuse offenses. He was stripped of his British citizenship after his convictions, but the government has been unable to deport him to Pakistan because of a provision in the Immigration Act 1971, The Independent reported.

The provision protects people who arrived in Britain before 1973 and lived there for at least five years.

Victims, including one identified as “Ruby,” have expressed fear for their safety after Ahmed’s release and urged the government to change the law so grooming gang offenders can be deported.

Pakistan has reportedly refused to accept Ahmed and has demanded the extradition of two political dissidents from Britain in exchange.

Ahmed was released on July 2 despite three failed parole attempts, most recently in October 2024. A document linked to a previous review in 2023 described him as a “high risk of sexual offending,” The Guardian reported.

One victim, identified as Amber, said she felt “physically sick” and had been unable to sleep because of concerns about Ahmed and his associates. Amber was among about 50 girls who were sexually abused and trafficked by Ahmed and his contacts from about 2008.

Ahmed was sentenced in 2022 to 22 years in prison after being convicted of rape and sexual abuse charges across two separate trials.

Earlier in June, a 219-page report from a privately funded parliamentary inquiry into organized child sexual exploitation in Britain claimed that at least 250,000 girls, and likely more, were subjected to gang rape, trafficking, torture and coerced pregnancy over several decades.

The inquiry, chaired by Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe and led operationally by survivor and advocate Sammy Woodhouse, was funded by more than 20,000 donors. It did not have statutory powers but included testimony from survivors, whistleblowers, politicians and experts across public hearings, according to Diya TV.

The report said the inquiry was launched because state institutions had “failed catastrophically over decades.” It accused police, social services, schools, the National Health Service, licensing authorities and successive local and national governments of allowing organized abuse networks to operate with what it called the “active or passive consent of the British state.”

The report also cited what it said was the first recorded case of Pakistani gang rape in Britain in 1955, when four Bradford-based Pakistani men were charged with raping a 15-year-old girl from Middlesbrough.

According to Diya TV, the 250,000 figure was based on a 2019 House of Lords statement by Lord Pearson of Rannoch, who extrapolated from the Jay Report’s findings in Rotherham, where at least 1,400 girls were abused between 1997 and 2013, as well as inquiries in Telford, Oxford, Rochdale and other areas.

The inquiry described the estimate as conservative, saying Britain had never systematically recorded the full scale of the abuse and that sexual violence is generally underreported.

According to the inquiry, evidence of gang operations was found in at least 149 local authority districts across Britain. (Source: IANS)