On Friday (13th November), British channel ‘Sky News’ fuelled anti-India hate by identifying a sex abuser named Bilal Kazi as ‘Indian student.’
Bilal, who is a Muslim by Faith, groomed over 70 minor girls aged between 11 and 17 during the span of August 2021 and August 2025. He has now been sentenced to 30 years in prison.
However, Sky News attempted to exploit the opportunity to tap on the rising anti-hate hate in the UK by highlighting the nationality of the sex abuser. “An Indian student who used the internet to groom and exploit 70 girls from across the UK has been jailed for at least 30 years with eight years on licence,” it tweeted.
The framing of Bilal Kazi as an ‘Indian student’ was deliberate. The British channel knew that its choice of words was made in bad Faith and hence chose to turn off replies underneath its tweet. But the damage was already done. White nationalists and extremists soon latched onto this rhetoric to spread anti-India hate and racism.
While Sky News is associating the isolated crime of a pervert to his ‘Indian’ nationality, the British channel however was cautious not to label coordinated grooming of minor girls by Pakistani Muslims as ‘Pakistani grooming gangs.’
In January 2025, it published an article attempting to whitewash the overwhelming representation of Pakistani Muslims in grooming gangs in proportion to their population in the UK.
The headline of the article read, “Wrong to say group-based child abuse is predominantly committed by Pakistani men – police chiefs.”
Similarly, another news report from 2015 highlighting the Rotherham grooming scandal makes no mention of coordinate rape by Pakistani Muslim men.
In January 2025, Sky News published a video lamenting how Elon Musk had been highlighting the issue of ‘grooming gangs’ in the United Kingdom after being prodded by ‘right-wing accounts.’
Interestingly, the British channel made no mention of the involvement of Pakistani Muslims in the scandal. In one instance, Sky News went on to label the perpetrators as one belonging to ‘Asian ethnicity’ even though 4% Pakistani Muslims accounted for 64% of the crimes.
The same channel however was quick to pass the crime of Bilal Kazi as grooming by ‘Indian student.’ It is clear that Sky News is selectively using identity markers such as ethnicity and nationality when it comes to crimes against women.
The case of Bilal Kazi
The investigation against Bilal Kazi 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 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.
