Seven men convicted of raping 13-year-old girls in Rochdale grooming case

SEVEN men were convicted on Friday in the UK’s latest grooming trial, after a jury heard that two girl victims were forced to have sex “with multiple men on the same day, in filthy flats and on rancid mattresses”.

Jurors at the court in Manchester, northwest England, deliberated for three weeks before finding the seven men, all of whom are of South Asian descent, guilty of rape.

Mohammed Zahid, 64, Mushtaq Ahmed, 67, Kasir Bashir, 50, Mohammed Shahzad, 44, Naheem Akram, 48, Roheez Khan, 39, and Nisar Hussain, 41, will be sentenced at a later date, but judge Jonathan Seely warned that they face “lengthy prison sentences”.

They were all remanded in custody, except Bashir, who absconded before the trial began.

Operation Lytton and police investigation

The men were prosecuted as part of Operation Lytton, an investigation launched by Greater Manchester Police in 2015 into historical child sexual exploitation in Rochdale, a town near Manchester.

The issue has long been seized upon by far-right British figures, including notorious influencer Tommy Robinson, but has also been adopted as a rallying cry by the Conservatives and Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform UK party.

The issue of grooming gangs received international attention earlier in the year when US tech billionaire Elon Musk launched incendiary attacks on his X platform against the UK government after it resisted calls for a national inquiry.

Over the course of several decades, men of mostly South Asian origin in various English towns are suspected of having sexually abused thousands of mostly white girls from working class families, often from troubled homes.

Court testimony on abuse

Prosecutor Rossano Scamardella said during the trial that the men had abused the two girls for several years from the age of 13 — between 2001 and 2006.

“They were often forced to have oral sex and vaginal sex with multiple men on the same day, in filthy flats and on rancid mattresses,” he said.

“On other occasions they would be required to have sex in cars, car parks, alleyways or disused warehouses. Wherever and whenever these men wanted it.

“They were children passed around for sex; abused, degraded and then discarded,” he added.

One of the alleged victims was also “being exploited and abused by many other Asian men” not in the dock, said Scamardella.

Police response and apology

Following the verdicts, detective superintendent Alan Clitherow, of Greater Manchester Police, apologised for not acting earlier.

“There was information at the time that police and other agencies could, and should, have done something with, and we didn’t,” he said.

“The way those victims were dealt with at the time is indefensible and inexcusable. We have made comprehensive apologies for that.”

(With inputs from agencies)