The Pakistani Muslim child rape grooming gang scandal in Britain has allegedly extended all the way to the South Asian government, with a former Pakistani state minister having reportedly been arrested on suspicion of raping young girls in Manchester in the 1990s.
Former Pakistani minister Rukhsar Ahmed, 62, who was re-elected to the Azad Kashmir Legislative Assembly last week, is currently on bail after having been arrested in July 2024 over allegations of having raped and trafficked young girls while in a Manchester grooming gang, The Guardian newspaper reported.
Two alleged victims of Ahmed reportedly came forward in 2024, claiming that the Pakistani MP raped and trafficked them in the 1990s when he was in his late 20s and they were minors. Ahmed is said to have been previously influential in Manchester, where he used to own a restaurant called the Guijar Palace near the city’s “Curry Mile” area.
A member of the Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML–N) party of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Ahmed previously served as a state minister in Azad Kashmir from 2006 until he was voted out of office in 2021.
A fellow party member of the accused MP said that he was unaware of the allegations made against him, telling the paper: “We just heard that he was part of some groups in Manchester in 1990s. But I personally didn’t know about such severe allegations existed against Ahmed.”
According to the report, the Pakistani politician was supposed to appear at a police station in Manchester last month as a condition of his bail. Yet, Ahmed did not appear, claiming that he was “too unwell to fly”. However, at the same time, he was pictured online campaigning for his newly won state parliament seat.
Should Ahmed fail to meet with police within the next six weeks, the Greater Manchester Police force may seek to issue an extradition request to Pakistan, which The Guardian noted may spark a “diplomatic row” between Islamabad and London.
Tensions between the two countries have already been inflamed over the issue of grooming gangs, with Pakistan so far refusing to accept the deportation of key child rape grooming gang ringleaders such as Shabir Ahmed, who renounced his Pakistani citizenship and destroyed his passport in a bid to stymie his removal from Britain.
While this has largely been treated as a fait-a-compli, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has argued that there are levers of pressure that Britain can pull on to convince Pakistan to take back their rapists, such as suspending all visas to the country so long as they reject the deportation of groomers like Shabir Ahmed. Mr Farage predicted that Islamabad would agree to take back Ahmed “within hours”.
The role that Pakistani immigration has played in the grooming gang crisis has yet to be fully reckoned with. However, a review sponsored by the left-wing Labour Party government by Dame Louise Casey found that grooming gangs were predominantly made up of Pakistani-heritage Muslim men who primarily sexually exploited and trafficked young, white working-class girls from disadvantaged areas of the country.
This reality was often actively covered up by local officials out of politically correct concerns, with child rape victims often being disregarded or even disparaged as being akin to prostitutes, while a blind eye was frequently turned toward Pakistani Muslim offenders for fear of appearing racist or stoking ethnic tensions.
Baroness Casey revealed that in one instance, a child victim’s file had the word “Pakistani” physically removed from her file with Tipex [Whiteout]. Despite her clear findings of significant overrepresentation of Pakistani Muslims in grooming cases, Casey lamented earlier this year that people are “still squeamish over looking at both religion and ethnicity of perpetrators.”
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