Bilal Kazi, 27, an Indian national who preyed on more than 70 young girls while studying in Britain, has been jailed for 30 years.
Kazi used a bogus photo and online alias as a 14-year-old boy, “Reece”, to groom victims, posing as their boyfriend and pressuring them, even while they were at school, to send naked photos and videos on Snapchat. He would then threaten to leak the images online, so victims sent more indecent images out of fear, Chester Crown Court heard.
His youngest victim was aged 10, and police have said he could have as many as 180 potential victims who have not been identified. Kazi targeted girls on apps including Snapchat, Wizz and Wink, and while playing Roblox.
Grooming and Blackmail
He preyed on vulnerable teenagers in particular, many left with psychological damage, feeling “broken”, their innocence taken and teenage years ruined, the court heard. Twice indecent images were leaked online, leaving the young victims suicidal.
Kazi admitted at an earlier hearing to 33 child sex offences relating to 19 victims, including causing a child to engage in penetrative sexual activity, making indecent images of children and six counts of blackmail, between 2021 and 2025.
Judge Steven Everett, Recorder of Chester, jailed the defendant for 30 years, with an extended sentence of eight years on licence, saying: “That’s the sad feature. He’s taken away their childhoods.”
Impact on Victims
Kazi told one girl, 13, that he was preparing her for sex with him, and told others that sending naked images is what people did for each other if they were in love. The defendant met another teenager on an app called Wizz before grooming her on Snapchat.
Some of her friends logged into her account and saw a video she had sent to “Reece” – which was shared around her school, spread to other schools and her “whole world fell apart”, she said in a victim impact statement. “I was young and I didn’t know any better. I became a joke overnight, like I had done something wrong. I was just a kid,” the statement said. The girl lost all her friends, was bullied, fell into severe depression, and took an overdose.
Kazi hacked the Snapchat account of another girl and publicly posted on her profile the indecent video she had sent him, which was seen by 93 of her friends. “Before she took it down the damage had been done,” Myles Wilson, prosecuting, told the court. The girl’s mother found the messages from “Reece” and police were called in, in May 2022.
Investigation and Arrest
Kazi, a chemical engineering student originally from Mumbai, was traced, living in Chester but had left the country. He was then arrested at Heathrow Airport in July 2023, when he came back from visiting family in Kuwait and his mobile phone was seized.
Kazi, at the time living in Hubert Croft, Birmingham, while studying for a master’s in chemical engineering, was on bail while police continued to investigate – but continued targeting teenage girls in the same way. Cheshire Police said their investigation into Kazi became the force’s largest ever online child sexual abuse case, with as many as 180 girls potentially involved, with victims across the UK including in Scotland, Devon, Cornwall, Avon and Somerset.
Police say 70 victims, aged between 10 and 17 at the time of Kazi’s offending, were identified across 28 of the UK’s 45 police force areas. Kazi was finally rearrested and remanded into custody in August 2025 and police found hundreds of category A child sex abuse videos involving teenage girls, along with 9,000 messages exchanged with one girl alone in the space of three weeks.
Outside court Detective Constable Georgia Hughes, of the Online Child Abuse Investigation Team at Cheshire Police, said: “The scale of Kazi’s offending meant this was a truly mammoth investigation, requiring significant resources and close collaboration across the force.” She added: “There is a misconception that online offences have less impact on victims than crimes committed in person, but that could not be further from the truth.”
Detective Sergeant Ross Peel said: “Victims should never feel ashamed of what they have experienced. The responsibility for these offences lies solely with the offender, and we want anyone who has been subjected to this kind of abuse to know that they will be listened to, supported and taken seriously.” He also said: “No matter where you are or how you choose to offend, those who target children and vulnerable people will be identified and brought to justice.”
