Baig: Pleaded guilty on second day of trial
A solicitor who groomed two teenage girls into engaging in sexual activity and sending explicit images, before pressuring them to retract their accounts, has been jailed for nine years and nine months.
Suleman Baig, 40 and from Grimsby, was also placed on the sex offenders register for life and handed a 15-year sexual harm prevention order.
Leeds Crown Court heard that Baig, a criminal defence solicitor, first encountered his victims through a childhood friend who had a 13-year-old daughter whom Baig was also close with.
Over time, he began to abuse his relationship with this young girl and her best friend. This began with him offering to pay the girls to send him nude pictures of themselves over Snapchat.
If they tried to refuse, Baig would offer them ever-increasing sums of money, up to as much as £100 for a single photo. He would hide the money in the family home for them to find, including under toilet roll in the bathroom.
In total, Baig paid his victims between £500 and £600 in exchange for the images.
Following his arrest, Humberside Police uncovered over 700 indecent and prohibited images of children stored in private apps. This included ‘pseudo images’ of one of his victims – which Baig had created using editing software based on the original photos he had paid her for.
The abuse intensified when Baig began taking further advantage of his relationship with the girls to make them perform sexual acts for him.
The court heard of how he told one of the young victims to think about vegetables to distract herself whilst the abuse was carried out. In total, Baig sexually abused his two victims on around 20 occasions.
Baig was first brought to the attention of officers in November 2021 through a third-party report of a concern for the welfare of a young girl. Detectives spoke to the girl at school, where she revealed what had happened – even during the conversation she was receiving multiple messages from Baig via social media.
Officers attended Baig’s home the next day and, whilst at first he attempted to hide in his house, they eventually gained entry and he was arrested.
The investigation led to the second girl being interviewed and providing officers with a statement.
Baig breached his bail conditions both before and after his arrest by trying to persuade victims and witnesses to withdraw their statements and cease cooperating with the investigation.
He was arrested a second time on suspicion of witness intimidation, two weeks after the first.
Baig eventually pleaded guilty on the second day of trial to 15 charges relating to child sexual abuse, including sexual assault, inciting children to engage in sexual activity, and making indecent images of children.
Despite initially denying contacting any witnesses, he also pleaded guilty to two counts of intending to pervert the course of justice.
Following his conviction, Baig was granted bail on the condition he surrender his passport within 24 hours to the police. The next day Baig presented police with an old passport which had expired nearly two decades previously, and it was established he had an up-to-date one.
Prosecutors successfully opposed his bail as a result and Baig was remanded in custody to await sentencing, which took place this week.
Graham Guest, Senior Crown Prosecutor for CPS Yorkshire & Humberside, said: “Suleman Baig was a practising solicitor who knew exactly how serious his crimes were, yet still continued to systematically groom and abuse two young girls.
“Baig exploited a position of trust, offering money to manipulate the girls into sending him explicit images for his own gratification. His actions were calculated, predatory, and deeply disturbing.
“When his offences ultimately caught up with him, he made flagrant attempts to pressure his young victims to withdraw their evidence.
“I have been extremely impressed by the courage of both victims in coming forward and supporting this prosecution even in the face of his attempts to silence them.”
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