Justice catches up with Oldbury rapist after almost eight years
A rapist was starting a long jail sentence today after justice finally caught up with him almost eight years after the crime.
Amar Mehraj was one of several men who committed serious sexual offences against a 17-year-old girl after she had been plied with drink and drugs on July 18 2009, Wolverhampton Crown Court heard.
The 29-year-old left for Pakistan after the offence, but before scientific tests revealed his involvement. Police were on hand to arrest him as soon as he returned to the UK in November last year. He was jailed for nine years nine months on Friday.
The teenage victim had been driven to an address in Vicarage Road, Oldbury, by another man she knew but had met by chance, said Miss Sophie Murray, who continued: “At the house there was another man she knew and several others she did not. Alcohol was brought for her.”
The teenager was given whisky and cannabis until ‘insensible’ and then taken upstairs to a bedroom where she was ‘subjected to multiple rape over a considerable period of time’, it was said.
At one stage she tried unsuccessfully to escape through an upstairs window before one of the men at the house took pity and helped her to leave.
She was at the house when Mehraj reached the address he had supposedly visited to buy cannabis, the court heard.
Mr Rashid Mohammed, defending, said: “People were drinking and smoking, so he stayed.
"He accepts he went to the bedroom and had sexual intercourse. He was not aware that there was a female at the premises when he decided to go there.”
Mehraj was getting married in Pakistan and had bought a plane ticket to fly there before the incident, it was said.
He left the UK before forensic examination of samples taken from the victim identified him as among those who had raped her.
Mr Mohammed continued: “He became aware police wanted to speak to him but ran away from the situation until it became too much to bear and came back knowing there was a possibility of being arrested.”
Three other men were convicted of raping the victim following a trial in September 2010.
Each was jailed for eight years while she changed her identity and started a new life.
Mr Mohammed pointed out: “When he left the UK he had not been charged and was not even wanted by the police.”
Longer sentences for rape were introduced in 2014 and Judge Nicholas Webb jailed Mehraj from Giles Road, Langley for nine years nine months after he pleaded guilty.
