Three men charged with 46 offences. Ten girls abused between 1996 and 2003. Ages 12 to 16. And now, in 2026, they finally turn up at Manchester Magistrates Court.
Ashfaq Khan, 46, from Bury. Qamar Jehangeer, between 38 and 44, from Bolton. Zaheer Iqbal, 52, from Accrington. All British Pakistani. Khan alone faces 36 counts of rape of a female under 16, plus attempted rape, indecent assault and false imprisonment. The others carry their own tallies of rape and false imprisonment.
This is Operation Sky. Greater Manchester Police spent years digging into these historical cases in Bury. Good. But why does it always feel like we're watching the same grim rerun?
The pattern we refuse to name
Decade after decade, girls from broken or ordinary homes get targeted, groomed, passed around and destroyed. The authorities know the profile. They see the community links. Then they tie themselves in knots to avoid spelling it out.
Parents watched their daughters change. Schools saw the absences. Social workers filed reports that went nowhere. Police had the names, the cars, the flats. Yet the machine creaked into action only after the evidence piled so high it became impossible to ignore.
How many inquiries, reviews and independent reports does it take before someone admits the cultural patterns matter? The reluctance to confront them hasn't protected victims. It has shielded perpetrators.
