Rochdale grooming gang member's deportation plea over son

Adil Khan (left) and Qari Rauf were both part of a gang jailed in 2012 for a catalogue of serious child sex offences

A member of the Rochdale grooming gang told a judge he should not be deported because his son needs a role model.

Adil Khan, 51, and Qari Rauf, 52, have been told they are to be sent back to Pakistan for the public good.

They were both part of a gang convicted of a catalogue of serious child sex offences in May 2012.

Since release from jail, they have mounted legal challenges against deportation. Khan in his final hearing said it was against his human rights.

Multiple legal challenges and appeals against deportation have spanned several years.

Judge Charlotte Welsh, at an appeal hearing in London, asked him how his son might be affected if he was deported from the UK.

Town's anger

Khan, speaking through a Miripuri interpreter, replied: "The father figure is very important in every culture in the world, to be a role model for the child, to tell him or her right from wrong."

Khan also claimed he was not wanted by his family back in Pakistan because his notoriety would be bad for the business they own.

Failure to deport any of the grooming gang has led to anger in Rochdale, where victims were living alongside their tormentors.

Khan got a 13-year-old girl pregnant, but denied he was the father, then met another girl, 15, and trafficked her to others using violence when she complained.

Rauf, a father-of-five, trafficked a 15-year-old girl, driving her to secluded areas to sexually abuse her in his taxi and ferry her to a flat in Rochdale where he and others abused her.

For two years, from 2008, a gang of men in Rochdale preyed on girls as young as 12, plying them with alcohol and drugs before they were gang-raped in rooms above takeaway shops and ferried to different flats in taxis where cash was paid to use them.

The hearing continues.

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