British Pakistani found guilty in 30 rape cases in new trial

LONDON: A British Pakistani ringleader of a sex-grooming gang was found guilty of 30 counts of rape in a new trial of the Rochdale sex-grooming case. Shabir Ahmed, 59, a father of four, and his friends raped an underage girl above a Heywood takeaway where he worked as a delivery driver. He also encouraged his victims to call him "daddy”.

The Pakistan-born former taxi driver claimed the girls gave him the name because he would scold them if they behaved badly in the takeaway. He was one of nine men convicted at Liverpool Crown Court in May over the sexual grooming of vulnerable girls in Rochdale between 2008 and 2010. He raped one underage girl twice and "aided and abetted” in a third rape by another takeaway worker, Kabeer Hassan. Ahmed also had a year-long sexual relationship with another teenage girl, although the girl herself regarded him as a father figure and still insists he did nothing wrong.

Ahmed behaved outrageously during the Liverpool trial, removing his T-shirt and ripping out clumps of his own chest hair in front of the judge in a bizarre bid to demonstrate he would have left damning follicles of his own hair at the scene of his crimes. "You preyed on girls because they were not part of your community or religion,” the judge said, as he jailed the Rochdale sex gang for 77 years. (...)