The ringleader of a groomsmen gang has been living a comfortable life 10 years after being released from prison and told he would be deported.
Qari Abdul Rauf, now 55, is still in the same city where he founded a gang of nine Asian men who were convicted of sexual offenses in 2012.
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Abdul Rauf outside his home in Rochdale in April 2021 Credit: Andy Kelvin / Kelvinmedia
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Rauf was imprisoned in 2012, before being released after serving less than three years. Credits: PA
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Shabir Ahmed (top left), Adil Khan (top right), Abdul Aziz (bottom left) and Rauf were part of a Rochdale child grooming gang Credit: PA: Press Association
Up to 47 girls as young as 12 were plied with alcohol and drugs before being gang-raped across Rochdale by a vile gang.
Rauf was sentenced to six years in prison in 2012, but was released in November 2014 after serving two years and six months of his sentence.
Then-Home Secretary Theresa May told him he would be deported to Pakistan because it would be “conducive to the public good”.
But more than a decade after being released from prison, Rauf remains in Rochdale.
He is believed to work for a takeaway app and walks around “like he owns the place”, reports MailOnline.
Neighbors said his presence in the town was “disgusting”.
One mum said: “Nobody can believe that monster is still here after what he did to those young girls.
“It’s disgusting. What is the state going to? Why is he still here?
“He lived in that house when he was offending, my children went around and played with his children.”
Other neighbors shared their anger at how Rauf was able to stay in the UK.
Keir accuses ‘desperate’ Musk of ‘inciting violence’ and says Tommy Robinson ‘doesn’t care about victims’ after X rant
Another said “no one wants him here”.
Rauf lived in a three-room semi-detached house last year.
He lost a long battle over deportation in 2018, but then launched another case.
Rauf insisted that the deportation order against him violated his human rights because he has a wife and children in the UK.
His appeal was rejected, but he remains in the country.
Rauf also renounced his Pakistani citizenship, making him “stateless” – barring deportation.
It comes a day after Sir Keir Starmer rejected growing calls for a national inquiry into the groom gang scandal.
At a press conference on Monday, he sharply criticized Elon Musk for “spreading lies and misinformation.”
Defending his record, the prime minister said: “Let me start with this: the sexual exploitation of children is extremely sick. Extremely sick. And for many, many years too many victims have been completely let down.
“Betrayed by perverse ideas about community relations or the idea that institutions must be protected above all, and they were not listened to and did not hear.
“And when I was the chief prosecutor for five years, I tackled it because I could see what was going on and that’s why I reopened cases that were closed and supposedly closed, I brought the first major prosecution of the Asian groom gang into a separate case was in Rochdale, but it was the first of its kind, there were many who followed that format at the time.
“We changed, or I changed, the whole approach of the prosecution because I wanted to challenge and I challenged the myths and stereotypes that prevented these victims from being heard.”
The Prime Minister also rejected calls for a statutory inquiry into the groom gangs, insisting that the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) led by Professor Alexis Jay was “comprehensive”.
Why was Tommy Robinson imprisoned?
By Ryan Merrifield
Tommy Robinson was jailed for 18 months in October after showing a film containing insults about a Syrian refugee.
The 41-year-old, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, appeared at Woolwich Crown Court after breaching a 2021 High Court order banning him from repeating false claims about the then schoolboy.
Far-right activist Robinson was charged with contempt of court for “publishing, causing, authorizing or acquiring” a film titled Silenced, which contained defamatory allegations.
Contempt of court is a legal term that describes behavior that obstructs the judicial process or risks unfairly influencing a court case, according to Gov.uk.
The attorney general said he “knowingly” violated the order on four occasions.
Robinson breached a 2021 High Court order barring him from repeating false claims about then-schoolboy Jamal Hijazi, who successfully sued him for defamation.
The attorney general filed the first contempt charge against Robinson in June 2024, alleging that he “knowingly” violated the order on four occasions.
Robinson pleaded guilty to the charges in court last year.
The lawyers previously told the judge that the violations included Robinson’s “release, cause, authorization or acquisition” of a film titled Silenced, which contained defamatory allegations, in May 2023.
A second request was issued in August and related to six further breaches, including showing the film at protests in central London’s Trafalgar Square earlier this year, which lawyers for the Attorney General said at an earlier hearing was a “flagrant” breach of the court order.
Aidan Eardley KC, the Attorney General, said the film had been seen “very widely”, including being seen by 2.2 million people after it was re-staged by Andrew Tate.
And, he said in written submissions that by the time the second claim was issued, he “had 44 million hits on X alone.”
He claimed that all paragraphs of the ban were violated “at one point or another” by the film.
The penalty for contempt of court can be up to two years in prison in the Crown Court or one month in the Magistrates’ Court.
The suppressed film contains false and defamatory claims about Mr. Hijazi that Robinson was forbidden to repeat.
Sasha Wass KC, for Robinson, told the court the production of the film was funded by Infowars, a company run by American Alex Jones, who claimed the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax.
The activist played the film at the protests in Trafalgar Square in central London.
It also remains pinned to the top of Robinson’s X social network profile, while he also repeated the claims in three interviews between February and June 2023.
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Sir Keir Starmer during his speech on reducing NHS waiting times on MondayCredit: Reuters
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