A 27-year-old Muslim man named Bilal Kazi has been convicted of sexually exploiting over 70 young girls in the UK. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison and an additional eight years on extended licence by a Chester Crown Court on Friday (November 13, 2026).
Kazi, living in Hubert Croft, Birmingham, had previously pleaded guilty to 37 charges of child sexual offences. The investigation against him began after one of his victims reported that she had been abused by him to Derbyshire Police in November 2021. The victim told the police that she was 13 when she began speaking to Kazi on Snapchat. She believed him to be around the same age.
She further revealed their conversation on Snapchat turned sexual as Kazi started asking her inappropriate questions and for her naked photos and videos. When she refused to send Kazi her nude photos and videos in July 2021, saying that she only wanted to remain friends with him, he became abusive. Kazi told her that she was his property and threatened to leak her photos and videos if she did not fulfil his demands. Scared by his threats, the victim continued to send him her pictures.
However, later the victim’s Snapchat account was hacked, and the photos and videos she had shared with Kazi were sent to her friends. That’s when she approached the Derbyshire Police for help and narrated her ordeal. In May 2022, officers from Cheshire Constabulary’s Online Child Abuse Investigation Team (OCAIT) took over the investigation of the case.
According to police, Kazi, who is originally from Mumbai, India, was studying for a PhD in Chester before transferring to Birmingham University, where he studied chemistry. He posed as a white British teenage boy called “Reece” while playing Roblox on Snapchat, Wizz and Wink to lure young girls.
He targeted gullible girls aged between 10 and 17 and led them to believe that they were in a genuine relationship with his fake Snapchat persona. He made the victims share their explicit images and videos with him online. They kept sending him more pictures, fearing that he would leak the pictures if they didn’t. He continued his criminal activities for about 5 years, between 2021 and 2025. The authorities could not catch Kazi, who had left the country, until July 2023, when he was arrested at Heathrow Airport on his return to the country.
His mobile phone was seized and sent for forensic examination, which revealed what the investigators reportedly described as the largest network of offending ever encountered by OCAIT. A total of 180 potential victims were identified by the authorities, who tried to trace them using data recovered from his device. The authorities were able to trace 70 victims, each of whom was spoken to by police officers to record their testimonies.
Investigations revealed that Kazi used different social media platforms to target young girls. After winning his victims’ trust, he would request them to send him their explicit images and videos. He manipulated the young girls into believing that sharing such content was a normal part of being in a relationship. The victims who refused to comply were threatened by him
Kazi was charged with 39 offences relating to offences committed between August 2021 and August 2025. He pleaded guilty to 37 of the charges.
Muslim grooming gangs in the UK
The United Kingdom has witnessed organised child sexual exploitation and Pakistani grooming networks over the past few decades. These grooming gangs targeted and sexually exploited thousands of minors across the country. According to the official figures, it is estimated that nearly 19,000 minors in England were sexually groomed in 2019 alone. Reportedly, the local authorities in England have identified around 18,700 suspected victims in 2018-19, up from 3,300 five years ago. The highest rates of child grooming victims in Britain were reported in areas including Birmingham, Lancashire, and Bradford.
In April this year, the British government announced a statutory independent inquiry into the Muslim grooming gangs, following institutional failures in delivering justice.
