Why is this grooming-gang ringleader roaming free in Rochdale?

In the latest slap in the face to Britain’s grooming-gang victims, the Daily Mail has revealed that one of the leaders of the Rochdale sex-abuse ring is still living and working in the town.

Qari Abdul Rauf, a former taxi driver and Islamic preacher who originally hailed from Pakistan, was at the head of a vile child-sex ring consisting of nine other Asian men. In 2012, he was convicted of sex offences, including raping and trafficking a 15-year-old girl. He was sentenced to six years in prison, but was released in 2014, after serving just two years and six months of his sentence.

Upon release, Rauf was told by the judge that he would be deported back to his native Pakistan. He appealed his removal, with his lawyers arguing that, because he had previously renounced his Pakistani citizenship, deporting him would render him ‘stateless’. Incredibly, Rauf also tried to claim that deportation would breach his ‘right to a family life’, under the Human Rights Act, because he has a wife and five children in the UK.

Rauf’s two attempted appeals were rightly rejected in 2020 and 2022. On both occasions, it was concluded that he could easily reclaim his Pakistani citizenship, but was simply ‘unwilling’ to. Yet thanks to Britain’s utterly dysfunctional border security, these deportation orders have not yet resulted in his removal.

Worse, as the Daily Mail has discovered, Rauf is currently living and working in Rochdale in the very town where carried out his sickening abuse, working as a driver for a takeaway delivery app. As one local woman told the Mail: ‘Just imagine it – you are one of his victims and you open the door to get your meal and he’s there.’

That this monster is still roaming free in Rochdale is another catastrophic state failure. The grooming-gangs scandal truly never ends.

Lauren Smith is a staff writer at spiked.