Twenty members of a grooming gang that subjected vulnerable girls to years of sexual abuse in West Yorkshire have been jailed for a combined 277 years, after reporting restrictions were lifted to allow the identities of those convicted to be made public.
The offences were committed largely in Dewsbury and Batley between 1995 and 2003 against three victims, one of whom was just 12 when the abuse against her began, West Yorkshire Police said. The girls were repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted over a period of years and, in some instances, supplied with Class A drugs.
The convictions are the result of one of the force’s largest child sexual abuse investigations, codenamed Operation Tourway, and proceedings began at Leeds Crown Court in July 2023. Because of the scale and complexity of the case, the evidence was divided across six separate trials, the last of which concluded in September 2024. Sentencing of the final defendant took place last year, but the names of those jailed could not be reported until now to protect the integrity of the court process.
The longest individual sentence — 28 years — was given to Sajid Majid, 53, of Mirfield, who was convicted of five rapes and three indecent assaults. Aurrangzeb Azam, 56, of Dewsbury, was jailed for 20 years after being found guilty of ten separate rape offences and an indecent assault. Manaf Hussain, 51, of Heckmondwike, received 25 years for six counts of rape and supplying Class A drugs, while Tariq Azam, 57, of Dewsbury, was sentenced to 24 years for five rapes and four indecent assaults. Zulfiqar Ali, 47, also of Dewsbury, was given 22 years and six months for four rape offences.
Among the older defendants, Rafiq Patel, 73, and Zaheed Ali Novsarka, 58, both of Batley, were each jailed for 18 years for two rapes apiece. Ibrahim Khalifa, 87, of Bradford, is likely to die in prison after being sentenced to 11 years for two rape offences. Donna Lynn, 45, of Cleckheaton — the only woman to be sentenced — received three years for controlling prostitution.
Ansar Mahmood Qayum, 49, of Dewsbury, was already serving 20 years for an earlier conviction involving four rapes and an indecent assault. The additional 10 years handed down in this case, for three further rapes and two indecent assaults, brings his total prison time to 30 years. Two other men were found by the court to have committed the acts they were charged with but were judged unfit to enter pleas.
Detective Chief Inspector Rob Stevens of Kirklees District Police said the inquiry had uncovered “truly appalling sexual abuse of vulnerable girls” by a large number of predators. Speaking after the lifting of reporting restrictions, he said juries had heard “shocking revelations” about how the victims were treated, describing them as having been “repeatedly sexually assaulted, in some cases given Class A drugs, and very much treated as commodities for the gratification of heartless predators”. He singled out the sentences given to Majid and Aurrangzeb Azam as evidence of the offenders’ “depravity”.
DCI Stevens also paid tribute to the women who came forward, saying the case had only come to light because of their courage. He acknowledged the difficulty of reporting historical sexual abuse and supporting lengthy prosecutions, adding that the survivors had shown “enormous bravery” in giving evidence and that he hoped they could take pride in seeing “people who have no place in society being put behind bars”.
Operation Tourway is wider than the prosecutions reported on this week. West Yorkshire Police previously confirmed that the broader investigation has looked at the sexual abuse and trafficking of eight female victims in North Kirklees between 1999 and 2012, with earlier court cases producing additional convictions that have so far brought the overall tally to about 28 men sentenced to almost 400 years between them.
The case is the latest in a string of investigations into grooming-gang offending in towns across northern England. A review published in January 2024 found that young girls had been “left at the mercy” of grooming gangs in Rochdale for years because of failings by senior police and council officials, echoing earlier reports on Manchester and Oldham that found authorities had repeatedly failed children. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, which delivered its final report in 2022, described the sexual abuse of children as an “epidemic” that has left tens of thousands of victims in its wake.
For the survivors in Kirklees, the lifting of reporting restrictions marks the formal end of a process that has stretched across more than two decades — from the years they were first abused to the day their abusers were finally named in public.
