Sixteen men including a police officer have been charged with multiple offences related to three girls aged between 13 and 16 in Halifax, West Yorkshire.
The men, almost all of whom have names indicating a South Asian background, are charged with a swathe of crimes, from multiple counts of rape to trafficking and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, which they allegedly carried out between 2006 and 2009.
One of them, 35-year-old Amjad Ditta, also known as Amjad Hussain, is a police officer — currently suspended from duty — and confirmed by West Yorkshire Police to have been “a serving police officer at the time of [his] alleged offence in 2009”.
Ditta is an Authorised Firearms Officer (AFO) attached to the force’s prestigious Protective Services (Operations) command.
He was appointed to the role of Positive Action Co-ordinator, responsible for increasing police force diversity, in 2016, according to a BBC report.
An official statement from West Yorkshire Police identifies the alleged groomers and lists their charges as follows:
Vaqaas Abbas, 30 of Halifax, charged with rape (x3) and supply of a class C drug (x3).
Nadeem Adalat, 34 of Halifax, charged with rape (x4) and supply of a class C drug (x4).
Sajid Adalat, 43 of Halifax, charged with rape.
Vaseem Adalat, 33 of Halifax, charged with rape (x2), trafficking, and supply of a class C drug.
Amjad Ditta aka Amjad Hussain, 35, a police constable based within West Yorkshire Police’s Protective Services Operations, charged with sexual touching.
Christopher Eastwood, 45 of Halifax, charged with rape (x2) and supply of a class C drug (x2).
Metab Islam, 46 of Halifax, charged with rape (x6), supply of a class C drug (x6), sexual assault (x2) and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
Mohammed Rizwan Iqbal, 34 of Halifax, charged with rape.
Ishtiaq Latif, 32 of Halifax, charged with sexual activity with a child.
Asad Mahmood, 33 of Halifax, charged with rape (x2) and trafficking.
Arfan Mir, also known as Khalifa Mughal, 36 of Halifax, charged with rape (x6), supply of a class C drug (x3), supply of a class A drug and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
Younis Mohammed aka Younis Khan, 34 of Halifax, charged with rape and causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent.
Nadeem Nassir, 39 of Halifax, charged with rape, supply of a class C drug and making threats to kill.
Shahzad Nawaz, 40 of Halifax, charged with rape, supply of a class C drug and making threats to kill.
Shazad Nazir, 44 of Halifax, charged with rape (x2) and supply of a class C drug (x2).
Sohail Zafar, 36 of Halifax, charged with rape and supplying a class C drug.
The accused men, who are not known to have been convicted of any crimes at this time, will appear before Bradford Magistrates Court on January 6th 2020.
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