Metropolitan Police have named Showkoth Ahmed (31) and Jahidul Hassan Jaigirdar (34), both Bangladeshi nationals with links to Tower Hamlets, as the men they want to question in connection with the rape of a 13-year-old girl in Weavers Fields park, Bethnal Green.
On the night of 1 August 2024, the girl reported being approached by the two men on Whitechapel Road around 11:30 pm. They convinced her to follow them into the nearby park, where she was raped. A member of the public later found her and helped her.
Police have conducted extensive inquiries over more than two years, including CCTV reviews, forensic examinations, and witness interviews.
Ahmed is believed to remain in the UK; Jaigirdar is thought to have returned to Bangladesh. A £10,000 reward is available via Crimestoppers.
The victim’s family has described ongoing fear, loss of independence, and severe distress.
This individual case fits into broader documented patterns of sexual offending involving men from Pakistani and, to a lesser extent, Bangladeshi backgrounds in the UK. High-profile official inquiries into group-based child sexual exploitation (CSE, or “grooming gangs”)—including the Jay Report on Rotherham and Baroness Casey’s 2025 national audit—have repeatedly found over-representation of men of Pakistani heritage among perpetrators in organized abuse of predominantly white British girls.
In Rotherham’s Operation Stovewood, nearly two-thirds of suspects were of Pakistani background, far above their local population share. Police data from forces including Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, and South Yorkshire show Pakistani men accounting for roughly 10% of group-based CSE suspects against a national population share of about 2.7%. Bangladeshi men appear at lower rates in these datasets (around 1%).