Taxi driver jailed for 12 years after raping drunk male passenger
Mohammed Ilyas has been banned from driver a taxi ever again and added to the sex offenders register
By Steve Brown
Words: Steve Brown
A taxi driver has been jailed for 12 years after raping a drunk male passenger.
Mohammed Ilyas, 44, picked up his victim from outside a gay bar in Leeds after he had been spending the night with some of his friends.
Expecting to be taken home, Ilyas drove his victim to an abandoned farm and, according to court documents, “orally raped him in the early hours one morning” in May 2016.
In a personal statement, the victim, who is in his 50s, said: “Because of what the taxi driver did to me that night I have at many points been suicidal.
“I never go to town alone anymore and will never get a taxi alone again. I will never forget this. I don’t know when or if I will ever get over it.”
Ilyas denied the accusations but was found guilty back in September. During his sentencing, his attorney asked for leniency because he is a “married father of five with no previous convictions”.
However, Judge Tom Bayliss said: “I’m quite sure that you deliberately parked your taxi outside what you knew was a gay pub.
“Thus deliberately engineering a situation where you found yourself alone in your taxi with a passenger who was incapacitated by drink.
“That passenger had come from a pub, you then committed rape on him, a homosexual rape upon a man who you had seen coming from a gay pub.
“I’m quite sure that you targeted [the victim]. It may not have been long in the planning, but once you saw him, you stopped your taxi and you targeted him.”
Ilyas was sentenced to 12 years and has been banned from working as a taxi driver again and his named has been added to the sex offenders register for life.