The founder of an international charity who left his business in Bradford to help orphans in Kashmir has returned to his hometown for a fundraising event on Saturday.

Mohammed Akhtar left his Bradford business and moved to Mirpur, along with his wife and daughter, to build an educational complex for 1,000 children, orphaned by an earthquake in Kashmir in 2005.

He returned to Bradford this weekend to attend the Caring Bradford fundraising gala at the Hilton Hotel to raise money for Kashmir Orphans Relief Trust and Marie Curie Cancer Care.

Mr Akhtar started visiting the country in October, 2005, the month the earthquake occurred.

He said: “My initial aim was to go out for a week and do this relief work and return to our normal lives.

“But that wasn’t to be because in the city of Bagh we came across a lot of buildings brought down and a lot of bodies were being pulled out.”

Before leaving Mr Akhtar tried to take aid to stranded communities in mountains. He came across orphans, who had been told to find aid in the cities.

Within a month they had rented a building in Mirpur and spent £26,000 renovating it to accommodate about 100 orphans. At the same time Mr Akhtar was running the takeaway chain Rajas in Bradford and Leicester.

He said: “I was commuting backwards and forwards every month for six months when I realised that this was not a short term thing.

“It was a lifetime commitment and there’s no way you can back off from our commitments and responsibilities. So this is when I decided to build a purpose-built educational complex for orphans.”

The decision to move to Mirpur was not taken lightly as Mr Akhtar’s wife suffers from muscular dystrophy and is in in a wheelchair.

The complex is being built purely on donations and orphan sponsorship. He said: “What we are building here is one of the largest educational complexes for orphans in South Asia.”

Mr Akhtar will be attending the event at the Hilton Hotel on Saturday.

He said: “It is a great thing that people of Bradford, where I was born and am proud to be from, have given us amazing support.”