Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: The UK Government is planning to announce changes to legislation that currently prevents the deportation of the Rochdale grooming gang’s ringleader to Pakistan, according to local media reports.
UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is considering whether the changes will be introduced through fasttracked legislation or as an amendment to the Immigration and Asylum Bill.
Shabir Ahmed, the ringleader of a Rochdale grooming gang, who served 14 years for several rapes and sexual abuse, was released from prison last week. Despite having been stripped of his UK citizenship, Ahmed cannot be deported to Pakistan due to a 55-year-old loophole in the Immigration Act 1971, which protects people who arrived in the UK before 1973 and lived there for at least five years, UKbased Independent reported.
Victims, including one identified as “Ruby”, have expressed fear for their safety after Ahmed’s release and have urged government to make changes to the law to ensure grooming gang members can be deported, the newspaper reported.
Reportedly, Pakistan is refusing to accept Ahmed and has demanded the extradition of two political dissidents from the UK in exchange.
UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is considering whether the changes will be introduced through fast-tracked legislation or as an amendment to the Immigration and Asylum Bill.
On July 2, Shabir Ahmed (73) was freed from prison despite three failed attempts to secure parole, the most recent being in October 2024. One document, linked to a previous review in 2023, shows Ahmed was considered a “high risk of sexual offending”, The Guardian reported.
One of his victims said she was feeling “physically sick” and not able to sleep as she considered the danger posed by Ahmed and his associates. Amber was one of about 50 girls who were sexually abused and trafficked by Ahmed and his contacts from about 2008.
In 2022, Ahmed was jailed for 22 years after being convicted of rape and sexual abuse charges spanning two separate trials, The Guardian reported. He was stripped of his UK citizenship after his convictions.
Earlier in June, a 219- page report released by a privately funded parliamentary inquiry into organised child sexual exploitation in the UK revealed that at least 250,000 girls and likely more were subjected to gang rape, trafficking, torture, and coerced pregnancy over several decades, with the perpetrators overwhelmingly being of Pakistani Muslim heritage and the enabling institutions overwhelmingly of the British state.
