Rochdale grooming gang ringleader’s cushy life revealed..10 years after being released from jail & told he’d be deported
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THE ringleader of a grooming gang is living a cushy life 10 years after he was released from prison and told he would be deported. Qari Abdul Rauf, now 55, remains in the same town where he formed a nine-strong gang of Asian men convicted of sex offences in 2012.
![[Abdul Rauf outside his home in Rochdale in April 2021]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/pictured-april-2021-809852847.jpg?strip=all&w=600)
The heinous gang plied up to 47 girls as young as 12 with alcohol and drugs before they were gang-raped across Rochdale. Rauf was jailed for six years in 2012, but was released in November 2014 after serving two years and six months of his sentence. He was told by then-Home Secretary Theresa May that he would be deported to Pakistan as it would be "conducive to the public good".
![[Rauf was jailed in 2012, before being released less than three years into his sentence]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2012-catalogue-serious-sex-offences-770850211.jpg?strip=all&w=725)
But more than a decade after his release from prison, Rauf remains in Rochdale. He is understood to work for a takeaway delivery app and walks around "like he owns the place", MailOnline reports. Neighbours told told the publication his presence in the town is "disgusting".
![[Shabir Ahmed (top left), Adil Khan (top right), Abdul Aziz (bottom left) and Raufwere part of a child sex grooming gang in Rochdale]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2017-ruling-paves-way-men-300383360.jpg?strip=all&w=723)
One mum 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.".
![[Sir Keir Starmer during his speech on reducing NHS wait times on Monday]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/britains-prime-minister-keir-starmer-961938138.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
Other neighbours shared their fury at how Rauf has been able to stay in the UK. Another said "nobody wants him around here". Rauf was last year living in a three-bedroom semi-detached home. He lost a lengthy deportation battle in 2018, but subsequently launched another case.
