Rapist jailed for abuse of girl in cellar

Deaf and mute victim was trafficked from Pakistan and not allowed to return

OAP Ilyas Ashar brought girl into the country when she was 10 (PA)

A pensioner who raped a deaf and mute girl he trafficked into Britain and kept in a cellar has been jailed for 13 years after a judge told him he had consigned his victim to a life of misery and degradation.

Ilyas Ashar, 84, failed to treat the girl like a human being during years of exploitation after bringing her into the country when she was aged around 10 years in June 2000, said Judge Peter Larkin.

The girl had no family and friends in Britain, had never been to school and was taught by the family only so that she could sign her name and they could steal more than £30,000 in benefits. The girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was beaten and forced to sleep and work in the cellar of Ashar’s five-bedroom family home in Salford.

Ashar, who owned other properties, routinely raped the girl in the cellar and in his other houses.

He was convicted of 13 counts of rape last week but they happened many more times, Minshull Street Crown Court was told. His wife Tallat was also jailed for five years for trafficking and for the benefit fraud. The judge told Ilyas and Tallat Ashar that they were “deeply unpleasant, highly manipulative and dishonest people” who treated the girl as an object to be abused and cast aside.

“All that she had in her life was the love of her family and her own human dignity. You two took that away from her. You consigned her to a life of misery and degradation. Throughout these proceedings not one of you have shown any remorse. You are concerned with your own selfish, self-centred interests.”

The girl wanted to return to her family in Pakistan almost from the moment she arrived in the UK but the Ashars would not allow it. The victim was found in the cellar when police raided the home in 2009.

One officer likened her behaviour to that of an “animal” – not allowed to sit on the furniture – and an indication of her status in the house.