A MAN who fled the UK when fellow members of a trafficking gang were arrested has been jailed after being extradited from Germany.

The case came to light after a 22-year-old victim was found at a house in Cunliffe Street, Chorley.

While there, the woman was able to alert the police after she was left alone for a short period.

Officers were then able to rescue her.

Pakistani national Nasar Khan, 26, acted as a fixer during the ‘sale’ of the Hungarian woman who was trafficked to Lancashire from her home country after she responded to a Hungarian website job vacancy for a babysitter in London.

The gang intended to use her in a sham marriage to another Pakistani male.

Khan went on the run last year when the gang’s ringleader, Bartolomej Sivak, 58, and accomplice Rana Yousaf, 27, were arrested after the victim escaped and alerted police.

But Khan, of Albert Road, Levenshulme, Manchester, was tracked down to Frankfurt, Germany, by Home Office investigators and extradited to the UK in June using a European Arrest Warrant.

At Preston Crown Court Khan was sentenced to three years after pleading guilty to conspiracy to facilitate a breach of immigration law.

Mark Jacobs, from Home Office immigration enforcement criminal investigations, said: “This was an appalling case where a vulnerable woman was brought to the UK on false pretences and held against her will for several weeks. It was the criminals’ intention for her to marry a Pakistani man to help him extend his stay in the UK.”

The woman’s traffickers used verbal threats and intimidation throughout her three week ordeal, in August and September 2013.

She was ‘bought’ by her would-be husband for £3,500, with Nasar Khan acting as the middle man in the sale.She was held at several addresses in the Manchester area and in Chorley.

The victim was safely returned to her family in Hungary.

Two other women who are believed to be victims of Sivak’s group were repatriated to Slovakia.