Notorious Rochdale grooming gang paedophile builds new house in Pakistan village while getting £285k taxpayer handout to fight deportation battle
A ringleader of the notorious Rochdale
grooming gang has built a house in his native
Pakistan - despite receiving £285,000 of taxpayers' money in a battle against being deported.
Furious neighbours of Abdul Rauf in Rochdale say they are
terrified to let their children out of sight after the 55-year-old was released having served just two-and-a-half years of a six-year prison sentence.
The convicted paedophile was told he would be deported back to Pakistan after completing his sentence in 2014 - but
he remains living in the Greater Manchester town more than a decade later.
Rauf
claims to be stateless after renouncing his Pakistani nationality - however his claim to have cut ties have now been thrown into doubt.
Neighbours in the remote village which he left to move to Britain in the 1990s have revealed that the father-of-five has paid for a house to be built there.
They said his intention was to live in it when he is finally kicked out of the UK.
They also contradicted his claim during his battle against deportation that he would be at risk in Pakistan due to 'public opinion' because of his convictions, saying his family remains 'influential' there.
Rauf was one of a nine-strong gang of Asian men who sexually assaulted 47 girls, some as young as 12, after plying them with drink and drugs.
'His brother lived there for few months but came back to his old home when his children told him to leave Abdul Rauf's home and go back to his old one,' the resident said.
As part of his 2022 appeal against deportation, Rauf claimed that if he was sent back to Pakistan 'I would be at risk due to the public opinion of the criminal conviction' and would not be 'protected' by the authorities there.
But a villager cast doubt on his claim, saying that while locals knew about the case, he would be safe as a result of his family ties.
'Since they are influential and financially strong people in their street, this topic was not much discussed,' the resident said.
Before his conviction, Rauf was seen as a pillar of Rochdale's Muslim community because of his role as a 'qari', a cleric who reads from the Koran.
But the men's trial heard how he trafficked a 15-year-old girl for sex, driving her to secluded areas to have sex with her in his taxi and ferrying her to a flat in Rochdale where he and others had sex with her.
This week neighbours of the terraced house in Rochdale where Rauf still lives accused him of throwing parties with 'loads of people' coming and going.
One woman said she was told by police that he had 'done his time' when she demanded that they remove him.
Angie Harrison, 45, a mum of two girls aged seven and eight, said: 'He has loads of people there, having parties and we don't like the look of the people who come.'
Locals spoke of their disgust that he is still allowed to live in the same town where he carried out his vile crimes.
One mother, who lives just a few doors away, said: 'Nobody can believe that monster is still here, after what he did to those young girls.
'It's disgusting. What is the country coming to? Why is he still here?
'He was living in that house when he was offending, my kids used to go around and play with his kids.'
The case comes amid anger at ministers' failure to deport dangerous foreign criminals.
Another member of the paedophile ring, Adil Khan, 55, also remains in Rochdale despite
losing an appeal against deportation as he also renounced Pakistani citizenship.
One of the ringleaders of the gang, Abdul Aziz, 54,
cannot be deported because he renounced his Pakistani citizenship before being stripped of British nationality.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy is currently understood to be leading discussions with Pakistan in a bid to secure the return of Rauf and Khan.
Just last week a review into the grooming gangs scandal by Dame Louise Casey criticised officials for '
shying away' from 'uncomfortable' questions about the ethnicity of rapists preying on young girls.
In one case, the Whitehall troubleshooter revealed she had found the word 'Pakistani' Tippexed out of a child sex abuse file.
Furious neighbours of Abdul Rauf in Rochdale say they are terrified to let their children out of sight after the 55-year-old was released having served just two-and-a-half years in prison.
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