WILL SHABANA MAHMOOD DEMAND PAKISTANI POLITICIAN BAILED FOR ALLEGATIONS OF CHILD RAPE RETURNS TO THE UK?

THEY HAD HIM IN A CELL IN MANCHESTER AND LET HIM GO. TWO YEARS LATER HE WON AN ELECTION IN KASHMIR.

Greater Manchester Police arrested Chaudhry Rukhsar Ahmed over allegations that he raped and trafficked girls in council care. They discovered in custody that he was a politician in Kashmir. Released on bail, he was allowed to keep his passport. Two years later he won an election in Mirpur. He has since failed to answer bail in the UK. Apparently, he is too ill to travel.

In July, a man was due at a police station in Manchester to answer bail in an investigation into the rape and trafficking of girls who had been in the care of the local authority. He did not arrive. The reason given was that he was too unwell to fly.

In the same weeks he was photographed working election gatherings in Mirpur, in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. On polling day he took the LA-4 Mirpur-IV seat in the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly with 22,376 votes, standing for Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, the party of Pakistan's prime minister.

His name is Chaudhry Rukhsar Ahmed. He is 62.

Greater Manchester Police says he is expected to answer his bail within the next six weeks, and that if he does not, officers could seek a warrant or take steps towards extradition.

There is no general extradition treaty between the United Kingdom and Pakistan. Section 194 of the Extradition Act 2003 allows special arrangements in an individual case, and those arrangements need the government in Islamabad to agree.

There was no need for Islamabad's agreement on 18 July 2024, when Greater Manchester Police had Chaudhry Rukhsar Ahmed in custody in Manchester. All the authorities had to do was take his passport off him.

THEY HAD HIM IN A CELL

Officers stopped Ahmed at Manchester Airport that day and arrested him on suspicion of rape and of trafficking children in care.

Two women say he raped and trafficked them when they were young girls in Rusholme in the early 1990s. They were in the care of the local authority. They went to the police and told officers what was done to them, three decades after it happened, and detectives questioned Ahmed about their accounts.

The wider investigation carries allegations from several women about the sexual abuse of children in care homes in that same period. Ahmed lived in Rusholme for many years and was in his late twenties at the time.

In October 2010 an election tribunal in Azad Jammu and Kashmir declared Ahmed, then minister for trade and industry, ineligible for possessing a fake educational certificate.

He had submitted GCE, O and A level certificates purported to have been issued by the Assessment Qualification Alliance, an educational institution in Manchester, in 1990 and 1992. An AQA official had written to the chief election commissioner in June 2006 stating the certificates were forgeries, because documents purporting to date from 1990 and 1992 bore the logo of an awarding body not established until 2000.

The forgery proves that he told an election commission he spent 1990 and 1992 in Manchester, sitting examinations, in the years the women are describing they were raped and trafficked as children.

Detectives learned of Ahmed's involvement in Pakistani politics while he was in custody for questioning. He had first been elected to the AJK Legislative Assembly in 2006. On 8 September 2018 he was sworn into the cabinet of Prime Minister Raja Farooq Haider Khan as Minister for Power Development Organization. He held a seat in Mirpur and a party organisation in Pakistan.

Ahmed was no low level councillor like so many of his kin in the United Kingdom. He was a Pakistani heavyweight. A man with power and influence.

So Greater Manchester Police applied for bail conditions restricting his ability to travel abroad. The statutory guidance on pre-charge bail, issued by the College of Policing under section 50B of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, approved by the Home Secretary and laid before Parliament, told them to. It directs that conditions may be imposed where necessary to prevent a suspect failing to surrender to custody, and it names intelligence that a suspect is a flight risk as a reason to bail rather than release under investigation. The officers who made that application did what the guidance instructs.

A judge refused them.

The refusal has never been explained. No court has been named, no date given, no reasons published, and nothing on the record states what the force put before the bench about the ministerial career, the constituency, or the assembly seat he intended to win back.

NOTHING ON THE RECORD SHOWS THEY ASKED AGAIN

That refusal decided one application on one day.

Paragraph 15.8 of the guidance sets out what happens when a suspect answers bail. The custody officer must reach a fresh decision under section 37 of PACE on whether to bail him and whether to impose conditions, and any conditions imposed on re-bail are not constrained by any earlier conditions. Each time Ahmed walked back into a Manchester police station, a custody officer had a duty to decide afresh and the power to restrict his travel.

The guidance also sets out who authorises the continuation of pre-charge bail. The first three months rest with a custody officer. Months four to six require an inspector. Months seven to nine require a superintendent. Unless a case is formally designated exceptionally complex by the Director of Public Prosecutions, everything beyond nine months goes to a magistrates' court, which must be satisfied under section 47ZF that further time is needed, that the investigation is being conducted diligently and expeditiously, and that bail remains necessary and proportionate.

Ahmed was arrested in July 2024 and was still on pre-charge bail in July 2026. Keeping him there took a custody officer, then an inspector, then a superintendent, then a court, each of them satisfied that an investigation into the rape of girls in council care was being pursued diligently, while the man under investigation held a passport and a political career in Pakistan.

No charge was brought in two years. Two questions follow and neither has been answered. How many times in that period was Chaudhry Rukhsar Ahmed re-bailed. On how many of those occasions did Greater Manchester Police ask for his travel to be restricted.

There is nothing on the public record that answers either.

HE WAS IN RUSHOLME IN MAY

He was seen with friends there as recently as May of this year, and associates say he had been visiting regularly. He is the sole director of the company that owns the former Gujjar Palace restaurant near Manchester's Curry Mile, boarded up and derelict, closed since at least 2009. That company was almost struck off earlier this year for failing to file its accounts. He has more than seventeen thousand followers on Facebook and posted images of a meeting with the Pakistani federal minister Amir Muqam while the investigation was live.

For two years he travelled in and out of the country whose police were investigating him for the rape of children. He is now too unwell to fly to a police station in Manchester but well enough to campaign across a constituency in Mirpur.

THE OPPOSITION PARTIES SHOULD BE ASKING GREATER MANCHESTER POLICE

Two women went to Greater Manchester Police and told officers what they say this man did to them when they were girls in council care.

Police arrested him at Manchester Airport. They learned while he was in custody that he held political office abroad. They asked for his travel to be restricted and a judge refused. Two years passed, no charge was brought, and every time he answered bail a custody officer had the power to ask again. Then he stopped answering bail and won an election in Mirpur.

Nobody has to say a word about his guilt to want to know what happened in between. He has not been charged and the allegations are allegations. Britain had him here and understood exactly who he was. Britain does not have him now.

Andy Burnham held the policing and crime functions for Greater Manchester across every one of those decisions, and he is now Prime Minister. The question belongs to the parties who sit opposite him. Put it to the force in writing, on the record, and publish the answer.

On how many occasions after 18 July 2024 was Chaudhry Rukhsar Ahmed re-bailed, and on how many of those occasions did Greater Manchester Police seek a condition requiring the surrender of his passport or otherwise restricting his travel?

If they answer, we will know who let him go. If they refuse, that is an answer too.

For eight years I have exposed how politicians, police and public bodies failed working class White girls who were systematically raped by Pakistani grooming gangs. Together, with the support of the people of Oldham, we forced the Government to concede a National Statutory Inquiry after years of resistance.

Now the harder fight begins.

Andy Burnham is no longer the Mayor of Greater Manchester. He is the Prime Minister. That does not place him beyond scrutiny. If anything, it makes scrutiny more important than ever.

As Mayor, Burnham commissioned a series of Assurance Reviews across Greater Manchester, including one in my hometown of Oldham. They were presented as a search for the truth. They were nothing of the sort. They were cover ups of cover ups that allowed those responsible to escape proper accountability.

Don't take my word for it. Even former Greater Manchester Police detective Maggie Oliver has described what happened in Oldham as 'nothing short of a cover up'.

Despite every effort to stop us, we forced a National Inquiry. Now Burnham and others are attempting to rewrite the history of what happened under their watch.
At present, the inquiry has made no commitment to examine Burnham's own role or the decisions taken during his time as Mayor. That must change before the Oldham investigations begin.

The pressure to protect a serving Prime Minister will be immense. The institutions that failed these girls will have every incentive to avoid putting the country's most powerful politician under oath. Much of the media will once again find reasons to look the other way.

That is why this campaign cannot slow down now.

For too long this has been a one man operation. It needs to become something much bigger. We need the resources to build a genuinely independent investigative organisation with:

• A professional website capable of reaching far larger audiences.
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Should we succeed, politicians will go to prison. Even if there is only the smallest chance of this happening, isn't it worth your support?

Raja Miah MBE