A grooming gang rapist has been caught on camera complaining from behind bars that he is innocent and how jailing evil predators like him is ‘really unfair’.
Irfan Khan, 37, from Batley, was sentenced to 12 years in prison, with a five-year extended licence, for three offences of rape and making threats to kill – but a new investigation has revealed his moans to supporters when calling from jail.
He was part of a group of more than 20 sexual predators locked up last year for a total of 346 years after eight young girls in West Yorkshire were raped, abused and trafficked across 13 years.
The 24 men were arrested after West Yorkshire Police’s discovery of their years-long campaign of abuse, which has been described as ‘abhorrent in the extreme’.
Operation Tourway uncovered rape, sexual abuse and trafficking of eight girls in the North Kirklees area, including the towns of Batley and Dewsbury, between 1999 and 2012.
His crimes are among those featured in a new Channel 4 documentary being broadcast this week about grooming gang victims and offenders across the UK.
Khan is among those being campaigned for by a group called Fighting For Fair Trials, which says many people jailed for child sex offences have been wrongly convicted.
It is run by his sister Samira Khan and a live TikTok discussion in which she was taking part is shown in the new film called Groomed: A National Scandal.
A TikTok livestream in which convicted rapist Irfan Khan, from Batley in West Yorkshire, is heard complaining about his jailing features in a new Channel 4 documentary
Irfan Khan, 37, from Batley, was last year sentenced to 12 years in prison, with a five-year extended licence, for three offences of rape and making threats to kill
The Channel 4 programme suggests that Irfan Khan could have broken prison rules by having a mobile phone – but his sister told MailOnline this was not the case.
She said her brother had called her mobile from a prison landline, coincidentally at a time when she was taking part in the live broadcast and so he could be heard.
Ms Khan is heard telling fellow viewers: ‘Hey, my brother’s on the line – he wants to talk to you guys.’
After a fellow participant asks, ‘Is that Irfan?’, she replies: ‘Yeah, he’s on the phone.’
Irfan Khan is then heard being asked by another man, ‘How’re you doing, bro, you good?’
The convicted offender responds by saying: ‘I’m all right, man – how are you?
‘Since I’ve been inside there’s been so many come inside all of a sudden – it’s been like a domino. Half of Dewsbury’s inside.
‘And it’s really unfair – you know, it’s just unfair. I’ve done nothing wrong and I’ve sat here for 15 months.’
Some 24 men were jailed as part of West Yorkshire Police’s Operation Tourway. They committed a vile campaign of abuse over 13 years, raping and trafficking eight young girls
Police carrying out the Operation Tourway probe that resulted in Khan and others being jailed had begun arresting the men across the West Yorkshire area in November 2018.
They were all charged by December 2020 and began appearing in court on December 11 that year.
The 24 men were sentenced as part of five trials at Leeds Crown Court between 2022 and 2024, with their identities and sentences revealed in April last year as reporting restrictions were lifted once all the cases had concluded.
Following the verdicts, Det Chief Insp Oliver Coates, of Kirklees Police, praised the women who came forward to report what happened to them when they were younger.
He said: ‘Their bravery in coming forwards and identifying their abusers has allowed us to take action against men whose offending and behaviour can only be described as abhorrent in the extreme.
‘Now that reporting restrictions have been lifted we can, for the first time, disclose full details of all those sentenced so far in what has been a long trial process.’
Channel 4 has said of its new documentary, scheduled for 9pm this Wednesday, that it ‘puts the experiences of five courageous women at the heart of a story that spans more than 20 years’.
Two of those featured have waived their anonymity as sexual abuse victims.
Two grooming abuse victims, Chantelle (left) and Jade (right), have spoken out about their ordeals in a new Channel 4 documentary due to be broadcast this Wednesday
Samira Khan, who set up the campaign group Fighting For Fair Trials, today told MailOnline: ‘My brother didn’t have a mobile phone.
‘He called from a prison landline. He called me on my mobile phone. I was online at the time – it was a coincidence. I told him I was on TikTok.’
She said she believed in her brother’s innocence, saying: ‘I’m not saying abuse doesn’t happen – it does happen and it shouldn’t happen. But there are a lot of men who are falsely convicted.’
The Government has been facing calls this year – including from X’s billionaire owner Elon Musk – for new inquiries into the handling of grooming gangs exposed across the country, in cases where the abusers were predominantly Asian men.
In January last year a report found young girls were ‘left at the mercy’ of paedophile grooming gangs for years in Rochdale because of failings by senior police and council bosses.
The damning 173-page review covered 2004 to 2013 and set out multiple failed investigations by Greater Manchester Police and apparent local authority indifference to the plight of hundreds of youngsters, mainly white girls from poor backgrounds, all identified as potential victims of abuse in Rochdale.
Successive police operations were launched, but these were insufficiently resourced to match the scale of the widespread organised exploitation within the area.
The study followed reports by the same authors on grooming in Manchester and Oldham, which found authorities had again failed children, leaving them in the clutches of paedophiles.
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse, which published its final report in 2022, described the sexual abuse of children as an ‘epidemic that leaves tens of thousands of victims in its poisonous wake’.
Separately, a Home Office study published in 2020 found child sexual abuse gangs were most commonly made up of white men.
The Home Office told the new Channel 4 documentary makers: ‘The grooming scandal was one of the greatest failures in our country’s history.
‘We have commissioned a rapid national audit to uncover the true scale of grooming gangs in the UK, including looking at ethnicity.’
Groomed: A National Scandal is scheduled to air on Wednesday 30 April at 9pm on Channel 4.
