I once assumed that high-profile inquiries into child sexual exploitation in Greater Manchester had cleared the ground for swifter justice in older cases. The reality, as this latest development shows, is more sobering.
Three men now face a combined 46 charges connected to the non-recent sexual exploitation of ten girls aged between 12 and 16 in Bury between 1996 and 2003. Ashfaq Khan, 46, from Bury, has been charged with 36 offences including multiple counts of rape of a female under 16, attempted rape, indecent assault and false imprisonment. Zaheer Iqbal, 52, from Accrington, faces four counts of rape of a female under 16 and two counts of false imprisonment. Qamar Jehangeer, 44, from Bolton, is charged with four counts of rape of a female under 16.
The charges stem from Operation Sky, a complex investigation by Greater Manchester Police into historical abuse in the area. The men are due to appear at Manchester Magistrates' Court today. No pleas have yet been entered, and the defendants retain the right to a fair trial. Still, the sheer volume of alleged offences against children barely into their teens leaves little room for comfortable abstraction.
Victim welfare as the stated priority
Police say officers are working with trauma-informed support services, insisting that safeguarding those affected and placing their welfare first remains the number one priority. These are necessary words. Yet anyone who has followed similar cases in the region knows how often such assurances have sat alongside earlier institutional hesitations that allowed patterns of abuse to continue.
The offences here stretch back nearly three decades. Investigations of this vintage rely heavily on victim testimony, preserved records and specialist support for those reliving trauma in adulthood. That the cases have reached the charging stage at all reflects persistence on the part of investigators and courage from those who came forward. Both deserve recognition.
What lingers is the uncomfortable contrast between the rhetoric of prioritising children and the slow grinding of the system when the crimes are historic. Deterrence only works if potential offenders believe accountability will arrive regardless of how much time has passed. For the girls abused in Bury in the late nineties and early noughties, now women in their thirties and forties, today's court date is one more step in a process that has already cost them decades.
