A 62-year-old former Pakistani state minister was arrested in Britain on suspicion of raping and trafficking young girls in a 1990s Manchester grooming gang, only to skip his bail appearance, claim illness, and win a new seat in Pakistan's legislature while campaigning online.
Rukhsar Ahmed, a member of the Pakistan Muslim League, Nawaz, the party of Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, was taken into custody by Greater Manchester Police in July 2024 after two alleged victims came forward with accusations dating back roughly three decades. Breitbart News reported that Ahmed, who once owned a restaurant called the Guijar Palace near Manchester's well-known "Curry Mile" district, was placed on bail with a condition to report to a Manchester police station. He did not show up.
Ahmed told authorities he was "too unwell to fly." At the same time, he was pictured online campaigning for a seat in the Azad Kashmir Legislative Assembly, a race he won. Greater Manchester Police may now seek a formal extradition request if Ahmed fails to appear within the next six weeks, a step The Guardian reported could trigger a diplomatic standoff between London and Islamabad.
The allegations place Ahmed in Manchester in the 1990s, when he was in his late 20s and the alleged victims were minors. He later returned to Pakistan-administered Kashmir and served as a state minister from 2006 until he was voted out in 2021, roughly 15 years in elected office, all while the alleged offenses apparently went unexamined.
A fellow PML, N party member, speaking to The Guardian, offered a telling response:
"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."
The remark raises an uncomfortable question: what did the party know, and when? "Part of some groups" is a vague phrase that invites scrutiny, and the unnamed party member's claim of ignorance about the "severe allegations" sits uneasily beside the fact that Ahmed apparently moved freely between British and Pakistani political life for decades.
Ahmed's case lands in the middle of a broader reckoning that British authorities have struggled, and at times refused, to confront. Dame Louise Casey, commissioned by the UK's Labour government to review the grooming gang crisis, found that the gangs were predominantly made up of Pakistani-heritage Muslim men who sexually exploited and trafficked young, white working-class girls from disadvantaged communities.
One detail from the Casey review stands out for its sheer brazenness: in at least one instance, the word "Pakistani" was physically scraped off a child victim's case file using Tipp-Ex, the British equivalent of Whiteout. Officials literally erased the ethnicity of the perpetrators from the paperwork.
Casey herself warned that people remain "still squeamish over looking at both religion and ethnicity of perpetrators." That squeamishness had real consequences. Local officials, according to reporting on the crisis, turned a blind eye toward Pakistani Muslim offenders out of fear that acknowledging the pattern would appear racist or stoke ethnic tensions. The victims, overwhelmingly young, vulnerable girls, were disregarded or, worse, treated as though they bore responsibility for their own abuse.
The demographic transformation of parts of England, visible in trends like Muhammad topping baby name lists in England and Wales for three consecutive years, underscores how deeply these communities have reshaped British society. That reality makes honest accounting all the more urgent, and the political class's reluctance all the more damaging.
Ahmed's case does not exist in isolation. Shabir Ahmed, a separate individual, no relation, is a convicted grooming gang ringleader whom Britain has tried to deport. Shabir Ahmed renounced his Pakistani citizenship and destroyed his passport in a deliberate bid to prevent removal. Pakistan has refused to accept his deportation.
That refusal has drawn sharp criticism. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage argued on X that Britain holds leverage it has simply chosen not to use. He called for suspending all visas to Pakistan to pressure Islamabad into accepting the deportation of convicted groomers, predicting that Pakistan would agree "within hours" if faced with real consequences.
Whether or not Farage's timeline is realistic, his broader point is hard to dismiss. If a foreign government refuses to take back its own convicted criminals, the host country is not without options, it simply has to be willing to use them. Britain, so far, has not been.
The contradiction at the center of Rukhsar Ahmed's conduct is stark and requires no editorial embellishment. He told Greater Manchester Police he was too unwell to travel. He was simultaneously visible online, campaigning for a legislative seat thousands of miles from Manchester. He won that seat.
Greater Manchester Police now faces a six-week window to seek extradition if Ahmed continues to avoid appearing. The Guardian noted that any such request could provoke a "diplomatic row" between Islamabad and London, a prospect that, given Pakistan's refusal to cooperate in the Shabir Ahmed deportation case, seems less a warning than a description of existing reality.
No formal charges beyond the arrest on suspicion have been publicly confirmed. No court documents or charge sheets have been made available. Ahmed has not offered any formal legal response beyond his claim of illness. The alleged victims' identities remain protected. These are significant gaps, and the case remains at an early stage.
But the pattern is familiar. Allegations surface years or decades after the fact. Victims are finally heard. A suspect with political connections in another country puts distance between himself and British law enforcement. And the institutions that should have acted sooner find themselves scrambling to act at all.
When a man can dodge a bail hearing by claiming he cannot fly, then win a foreign election while campaigning in public, the system is not working. It is being worked.
