Mohammed Zahid, 65, has been sentenced to 35 years in prison for raping two schoolgirls in Rochdale on multiple occasions. Photo / Greater Manchester Police
Two schoolgirls raped by an Asian grooming gang in Rochdale were “passed around for sex, abused, degraded, and then discarded”, a court has heard.
Judge Jonathan Seely said the victims, who are both white, were “seriously let down by those whose job it was to protect them”.
Today he sentenced seven members of the gang to a combined total of 148 years in prison at Manchester Crown Court.
The victims, known as Girl A and Girl B, were “failed woefully”, the judge said, and one of them had been “chillingly” described in a social services document as having prostituted herself at 10 years old.
The ringleader of the gang, Mohammed Zahid, 65, known as “Boss Man”, was sentenced to 35 years in prison for raping both girls on multiple occasions.
Zahid gave free underwear from his lingerie stall at Rochdale indoor market to both teenagers, along with money, alcohol, and food, in return for regular sex with him and his friends.
The father-of-three was one of seven Asian men convicted by a jury in June of committing various sexual offences against the girls between 2001 and 2006.
Both were treated as “sex slaves” from the age of 13, and came from “deeply troubled” homes, prosecutors said.
They were expected to have sex “whenever and wherever” the defendants and other men wanted, in filthy flats, on rancid mattresses, in cars, car parks, alleyways, and disused warehouses.
Passing sentence, Judge Seely said both victims had suffered “incessant abuse” and had been targeted by “gangs of sexually predatory men”.
Girl A told the jury she could have been targeted by more than 200 offenders as her phone number was swapped in the town, but said “there was that many it was hard to keep count”.
Giving evidence, Girl B said she was living in a local children’s home when she was preyed on by Zahid and fellow market traders Mushtaq Ahmed, 67, and Kasir Bashir, 50, who were all born in Pakistan.
She said she presumed various agencies knew what was going on as police regularly picked her up after social workers labelled her a “prostitute” from the age of 10.
Girl B said she was repeatedly sexually abused and “everybody knew what was going on”, and the description of her as a prostitute was “vile”.
The judge said that Girl B was “appallingly abused” by Zahid, who raped in her in a dark cellar on a “filthy mattress”.
He said that Zahid had shown a “complete lack of humanity” towards his victims during his “campaign of rape”.
The court heard Zahid, who came to the United Kingdom from Pakistan in 1978, thought he was “almost untouchable” as he brazenly visited the care home to pick her up.
He was convicted of raping Girl A and Girl B, who did not know each other, on multiple occasions.
Jurors also found him guilty of offences of indecency with a child and procuring a child to have sex.
Prosecutor Rossano Scamardella KC told the court that “[Girl B] was in the care system for most of her young life and Mohammed Zahid knew about that.
“It got to a stage where he was confident that nothing would be done about it and he would ring the care home and would also go there to pick her up and drop her off.
“Such was the brazen way he did this that by the end of the abuse he felt almost untouchable. It’s not as if she had no-one to turn to.
“She turned to the care home. She turned to social services. She felt able to tell them at some stages, or other people did, and nothing was done. People knew, authorities knew. And nothing was done.”
In 2016, Zahid was jailed for five years after he was convicted of engaging in sexual activity in 2005 and 2006 with a 14-year-old girl after she visited his stall to buy tights for school.
Ahmed was jailed for 27 years and Bashir for 29 years. They were both found guilty of multiple counts of rape and indecency with a child, in relation to Girl B.
Bashir was sentenced in his absence after he absconded while on bail before the trial got under way. He is believed to have fled the country.
Taxi drivers Mohammed Shahzad, 44, Naheem Akram, 49, Nisar Hussain, 41, all from Rochdale, were convicted of multiple counts of rape against Girl A.
Both Shahzad and Akram were jailed for 26 years and Hussain was sentenced to 19 years in prison.
Roheez Khan, 39, of Athole St, Rochdale, was jailed for 12 years after he was found guilty of a single count of rape against Girl A.
Liz Fell, specialist prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service’s organised child sexual abuse unit, said: “None of the defendants have shown the slightest remorse for what they have put the survivors through.
“By maintaining their denials and refusing to accept responsibility, they forced these brave women to relive the abuse they suffered at their hands through a five-month trial.”
Detective Chief Inspector Guy Laycock, of Greater Manchester Police, said: “Bringing child abusers to justice is why we work so tirelessly day-in, day-out, and I am so pleased for the victims that we have been able to help deliver this justice for them”.
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