Three men convicted of sexual offences against underage girl

Nazir Khan, Usman Sultan and Kamran Hussain were today found guilty of rape of a girl from Keighley, who cannot be named for legal reasons, over a decade ago. 

Usman Sultan, 29, of Lawkholme Lane, Keighley, was found guilty of three out of four counts of rape.

Nazir Khan, 29, of no fixed abode, was found guilty of two counts of rape.

Kamran Hussain, 29, of Hawk Street, Keighley, was found guilty of one of the two rape charges he was accused of.

Judge Andrew Hatton told the three men they will be sentenced at Bradford Crown Court on Friday, September 10, due to the preparation of pre-sentence reports on each of them.

They were found guilty, all by unanimous verdicts, by the trial jury, which began its deliberations last Friday afternoon and returned Bradford Crown Court at 11.45am today following a six-week trial.

A total of six defendants were on trial facing a total of 16 counts between them and all six pleaded not guilty to all charges against them.

The trial's three other defendants, Ali Razaq, Hassan Ali and Sohail Hussain, were acquitted.

Ali Razaq, 27, of Hawk Street, Keighley, was found not guilty of one count of rape; Sohail Hussain, 30, of Skipton Road, Keighley, was acquitted of five counts of rape and Hassan Ali, 28, of Hollings Lane, Keighley, was found not guilty of two counts of rape.

The case against a seventh man, Kasam Hussain, 30, of Lister Street, Keighley, was dismissed earlier in the trial.

Usman Sultan and Nazir Khan were both remanded in custody until the sentencing hearing. Kamran Hussain was given conditional bail until that date.

The trial had earlier heard the girl was often drunk most days as she was regularly left home alone at night.

The men would come to a house and treat it like it was their own, drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis.

She alleged she performed oral sex on the men on multiple occasions and was ‘palmed off’ on them.

The girl initially made two rape allegations to police in 2009, but the case was closed then as she did not co-operate further with the investigation.

But the police investigation re-started between 2015 and 2018.

Just before the alleged attacks took place, the girl was described as withdrawn and vulnerable.

Prosecutor Kama Melly QC, who opened the case, branded the men as ‘sexual predators’ and manipulation and exploitation of the girl took place by the group.

She added intimidation and a sense of expectation often led to the girl having to perform these acts on the men.

She told the court the girl often felt “frightened” and “petrified” about the men coming to her house and took to sleeping with a knife under her pillow.

The trial also heard the girl's father said he had a face-to-face conversation with his daughter at an unconfirmed date a few months after April 2009 where she told him about a male had raped her.

The girl revealed to her father the allegation that Nazir Khan, nicknamed 'Khanny', had raped her in April 2009.

But her father said she had then become "a lot more within herself” and “was not the happy child” he previously knew.

The girl's father made an original statement to police in September 2019 and made a second statement more recently, where he clarified that he knew of Asian males who had raped his daughter. He changed this part of his statement to an Asian male.