Keighley grooming four set for Court of Appeal hearing

The men, aged between 30 and 42, were jailed for a combined 49 years last month at Bradford Crown Court.

But a subsequent challenge has cleared the the first hurdle, and the Attorney General's office believes that the jail terms for Hassan Basharat, Baber Hussain, Omar Safdar, and Imran Sabir are too low.

Bradford Crown Court (Image: Newsquest)

The application was made under the Unduly Lenient Sentence Scheme which allows members of the public to ask for certain sentences to be reviewed.

Now the first stage has been successful, it means that the Court of Appeal will review the length of the sentences and could increase one or all of them.

A date has not yet been set for the hearing.

The four men were jailed over multiple counts of raping the same girl, between March 2009 and March 2010.

Basharat, 32, of Highfield Road, Keighley, was jailed for 12 years for one count of rape and conspiring to rape with one of his co-defendants, Imran Sabir.

Hussain, 36, of Thorn Lane, Heaton, was jailed for 13 years for seven counts of rape.

Safdar, 30, who was already in prison, was jailed for 12 years for three counts of rape. He raped the victim in her own home on one occasion despite her asking him not to attend.

Sabir, 42, of Spencer Street, Keighley, was jailed for 12 years for one count of rape, and conspiring to rape with Basharat.

The court heard that the men would rape the same girl, described as 'extremely troubled and tormented', either individually, or together, often plying her with alcohol.

They drove the girl, who was 15 at the time, to parks, flats and isolated places in the Keighley area, where they raped her

The group were convicted following a seven-week trial, which ended in October last year.

Basharat was also jailed for a further eight months each for two charges of dangerous driving, in Reading, Berkshire, and Saltaire, in April 2020 and January 2021 respectively. This took his total sentence to 13 years and four months.

The sentencing of a fifth man, Amjad Hussain, 35, of Adar Street, Keighley, also convicted of three charges of rape, took place last week, and he was jailed for 12 years.

His sentence is not involved in the unduly lenient bid.

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