Cozy life for Rochdale gang boss… who hid darkest secrets from his proud parents: Predator who treated 12-year-old girl ‘like a piece of meat’, lived in £700,000 detached house and worked in a family clothing business

The leader of Rochdale’s newest grooming salon led an outwardly respectable life, was involved in the family’s children’s clothing business and lived in a £700,000 detached house close to a primary school.

But 39-year-old Mohammed Ghani was hiding a dirty secret: that as a young man he seduced a young girl into tolerating humiliating sexual abuse by his older brother and other associates.

It is a shame that has ‘devastated’ his elderly Pakistani-born businessman father Abdul and his mother, community members told MailOnline this week.

“I have known Abdul and Shamin for many, many years, so the news that two of their sons were involved in this kind of thing must have come as a big shock,” said Maqbool Ahmed, 71, their longtime neighbor on a quiet street. , chic part of Rochdale.

“They will be devastated and have daughters of their own.”

Ghani, 39, has put on a respectable facade while living in a £700,000 detached house in Rochdale (pictured)

Ghani worked in his family’s clothing business (pictured) and was once listed as a director and major shareholder of the company

Ghani’s brother, Jahn Shahid Ghani, 50, received a 20-year prison sentence for inciting a child to engage in sexual activity and for four counts of penetrative sexual activity with a child.

He revealed that Mr Ghani, like many of the older generation of Rochdale’s Pakistani community, had previously struggled to understand how young, single men could participate in such abuse.

“I used to have conversations about what happened to those girls,” Mr. Ahmed said.

‘And he said, ‘People like that should be punished.’

One of the girls in the last case to go to trial was just 12 when she met Ghani, or ‘Gunny’ as she knew him, who was 19 years old.

Ghani – who is believed to have been born in Britain – was in a passing car that stopped, asking the girl to come for a ‘sesh’.

Despite their age difference, the youngster – starved of affection in her difficult home life – would come to regard him as her boyfriend, the men’s trial heard.

But after being attended to, she was plied with drugs and alcohol and taken to the butcher’s flat – owned by Ghani’s brother Jahn Shahid Ghani – and treated ‘like a piece of meat’.

Girl A said that Mohammed Ghani would pick her up from school while she was still wearing her school uniform. He would regularly have sex with her and persuade her to have sex with his friends.

He later encouraged her to have sex with his cousin, who was in his 30s and on vacation from Pakistan, on the grounds that he had “never had sex with a white girl before,” the lawsuit said.

Ghani also passed her on to his ‘close friend’ and fellow abuser Insar Hussain, who then had sex with her on ‘numerous occasions’.

She unknowingly introduced a second girl to Jahn Shahid Ghani, who in turn was given drugs and sexually abused.

While the two victims had to try to rebuild their shattered childhood, Ghani is said to have worked for the family business, a backstreet women’s and children’s clothing business.

He was listed with Companies House as a director and major shareholder, although he cut ties with the company after 2019.

Asked about Ghani’s role in the company this week, a woman at the warehouse declined to comment.

The company helped the family pay for a £700,000 detached house in an upscale area of ​​Rochdale, where Ghani is said to have lived at the time of his arrest.

A woman in the now-derelict house claimed Ghani’s father was “out of town.”

His dark past only came to light after girl A – now an adult woman – told her experiences more than ten years later while participating in a parenting course.

Ghani – who had a previous conviction for drug possession – did not give evidence in his defense during the trial.

At his sentencing this week, his barrister, Clare Wade KC, said he ‘accepted his convictions’.

However, she said it was Ghani’s claim that he “has no deep-seated sexual interest in young girls.”

Reading from Girl A’s victim’s personal statement, prosecutor Charlotte Rimmer said she considered ‘Gunny’ to be the ‘beginning of things’.

“She described him taking cruel advantage of her, as all men did,” she said.

Meeting him was “the biggest mistake of her life,” she added, saying: “He made her feel worthless, he humiliated her, he thought it was a joke to treat her like a piece of meat.”

In evidence, she said her abusers “deserve everything they get” – a sentiment sure to be shared by all right-thinking people who hear about her horrific ordeal.