News agency reporters named a gang of school bullies who tortured a boy with a red hot iron after successfully challenging a court order banning their identification.

Salford-based Cavendish Press made the challenge after the four boys, aged between 15 and 17, were all granted automatic anonymity under s.49 of the Children and Persons Act (CYPA) 1933.

The Oldham gang – Shohaib Khan, 17, Adam Hussain, 16, Sufyan Yaqub, 16, and Ahsan Khan, 15 – had been charged with blackmail, false imprisonment and GBH after they held another boy captive and tortured him with a red hot iron during a five month campaign of bullying.

After the gang were convicted, the agency’s managing director Jon Harris passed a letter to Judge Timothy Mort urging him to lift the order, using Crown Prosecution Service guidance on anonymity orders to argue that they can be lifted in circumstances when youths have been convicted of a “particularly serious crime.”

(Clockwise from top left) Shohaib Khan, Adam Hussain, Ahsan Khan and Sufyan Yaqub

Jon argued some of the offences to which the youths had been convicted attracted a possible life sentence and quoted the prosecutor in the case who said the violence which occurred was on an “extreme level that could easily borderline on torture”, further pointing that at least two of the youths were close to the age of 18 anyway and that the incident itself and subsequent trial was reported extensively in the local press.

He said many locals in the Oldham area already knew the identities of the boys – and enclosed examples of them being named on Facebook as the attackers. He said the victim’s anonymity would continue to be protected as there was a sexual element to the offending.

Lawyers for the youths argued in court for the order to remain in place, but Judge Mort agreed to Jon’s application.

Judge Mort said: “I’ve got to have regard on one hand the open justice principle and if matters are very serious the fact people are named may be a valuable deterrent. On the other hand I have regard to young people and the interests of the child.

“There was violence carried out upon this young man who was subject to what might be described close to incidents of torture and I’m of the view this was such a serious crime, it’s in the public interest that the names should be published.

“It has valuable deterrence affects so people realise if things like this take place people can come forward and people might realise they’re going to be the subject of reports.”

The four youths were locked away for a total of almost 20 years.

Said Jon: “This was a horrific trial which got a lot of coverage in the local press and was talked about extensively on Facebook and in the locality.

“But whatever reason noone in the local press had thought to apply to have the anonymity order lifted. Our first involvement in covering the case was when we attended a pre sentencing hearing and it was clear to us there was an obvious to opportunity to have the order overturned due to what these lads did to this boy.

“It took an afternoon of research and a two page letter to the judge to win the argument. Obviously I’m delighted we succeeded.”