Protesters gathered in the town this week amid rumours that asylum seekers or immigrants were involved.

However, officers said on Friday there was no evidence of that.

They also said there was no evidence "of the offence as reported".

The woman, in her 20s, said she was followed after leaving Labyrinth Epsom nightclub on Saturday.

The alleged attack is said to have happened between 2am and 4am outside a Methodist church on Ashley Road.

Assistant chief constable Sarah Grahame said Surrey Police had reviewed CCTV, interviewed potential witnesses and carried out house-to-house enquiries and forensic investigations.

"To date, we have not found any evidence of the offence as reported but the investigation is ongoing," she said in a statement.

"There has been much speculation about the non-release of a description of any suspects, especially regarding the ethnicity.

"No descriptions have been released as the information about the incident and potential suspects is so limited. To address the specific commentary, there is no evidence that asylum seekers or immigrants were involved."

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Protesters demanding information on the case congregated in Epsom town centre on Wednesday, with dozens of police carrying shields also deployed.

The demonstration had been promoted online by Danny Tommo, a former associate of right-wing activist Tommy Robinson.

The group blocked the road before leaving the scene around 8pm.

He was detained after a court in Ireland issued an arrest warrant

Dubai authorities said they received a judicial file and "immediately launched intensive search and surveillance operations, leading to the suspect's capture" within 48 hours.

They said the "Irish fugitive" was detained on 15 April over his "alleged role in an international organised crime network".

Dublin's high court previously named Kinahan as a senior figure in a crime gang involved in international drug trafficking operations and firearm offences.

In 2022, US authorities issued a reward of up to $5m for his arrest.

Kinahan was previously linked to the boxing world and co-founded a well-known management and promotions company - which later shut down.

In 2016, a bloody feud with the rival Hutch gang led to an attempt on his life when men disguised as armed police opened fire at a boxing weigh-in at a Dublin hotel.

Kinahan managed to escape but gang member David Byrne was killed, shot multiple times as he ran for the exit.

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Irish police confirmed on Friday that a man in his late 40s was taken into custody in line with the extradition agreement the two countries.

They said the arrest was a "matter for the authorities in the United Arab Emirates at this time".

"Today's arrest is another extremely important demonstration of the need for international law enforcement co-operation in tackling transnational organised crime," a statement added.

Kimberley Cookson was jailed for three years and four months for the gross negligence manslaughter of Noah Sibanda.

Fairytales Day Nursery in Dudley was fined £240,000 as well as £56,000 in costs at a sentencing hearing on Friday.

Wolverhampton Crown Court heard Cookson, 23, from Dudley, was captured on CCTV tightly wrapping the 14‑month‑old in a sleeping bag, placing a blanket over his head, and laying him face down to sleep in an indoor tepee on 9 December 2022.

At one point, Cookson used her leg to restrain him, in what the prosecution said appeared to be an effort to "make him sleep when he did not want to", and he was left unchecked for two hours.

After a "considerable duration", it was noticed he was not breathing, and the emergency services were called.

He was pronounced dead in hospital an hour later despite attempts to revive him.

Cookson admitted gross negligence manslaughter last month.

Director and business owner Deborah Latewood, 55, also from Dudley, was fined £240,000 after also pleading guilty to a health and safety offence, accepting she should have known children were being put down to sleep in a dangerous way.

She was spared jail due to a recent change in sentencing laws, as she was given a six-month jail sentence, suspended for two years.

The private nursery, which is no longer in operation, admitted to systemic failures including inadequate training, supervision and unsafe sleeping procedures.

The company previously pleaded guilty to a corporate manslaughter charge and a health and safety offence.

Passing sentence on Friday, High Court Judge Mr Justice Choudhury said: "Tragically, the events of that day meant that Mr and Mrs Sibanda would never see Noah alive again.

"The court has been shown CCTV footage of the baby room. The images on that footage can only be described as shocking.

"There were repeated instances of rough handling of babies by several of the nursery practitioners, including Miss Cookson, often in view of a manager."

The judge said babies had been repeatedly tightly swaddled and then covered in blankets or cloth in what was an "established" practice.

"Not once did any practitioner challenge another about this practice. These dangerous and unacceptable practices, which went unchecked at his nursery, reached their inevitable conclusion on the 9th of December 2022."

The judge told Cookson: "In my judgment Noah's suffering may not have been obvious to you but it ought to have been.

"This is not a case where you knowingly set out to suffocate or asphyxiate.

"You are clearly remorseful. You have attempted to understand that Noah's parents are the real sufferers here. You have not sought to blame others."

Ofsted, which ordered the nursery to close shortly after the incident, said: "Our thoughts remain with Noah's family and we are deeply sorry for their loss.

"No child should ever come to harm in a place that is meant to keep them safe.

"The government has recently announced new funding to allow us to inspect nurseries more frequently and we continually review our work, alongside our partners, to help make nurseries as safe as they can be for children."

Conor McGrath, 29, was a borough councillor in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, between 2023 and 2025. He also worked for Stevenage MP Kevin Bonavia, who has condemned McGrath's "sickening criminality".

McGrath was handed an eight-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, on Friday after he pleaded guilty to three counts of making indecent images of children last month.

"If you find your way back to me for offences of this type… I will revoke that order and off to prison you will go," Judge Jonathan Mann KC told McGrath.

The defendant admitted to having 77 category A images, 109 category B images, and 329 category C images and videos between June 2024 and March 2025.

He was arrested on 25 March last year on an unrelated matter and police seized several of his devices, including an iPhone and iPad.

After being released under investigation, McGrath met a colleague at a pub and told them about being worried officers would find "rude photographs" on his device and think he was a paedophile, as well as deleting or trying to delete images on his devices, the trial heard.

Officers launched a second search and seizure at McGrath's home after a referral was made to the Metropolitan Police Parliamentary Diplomatic Protection Command following the meeting with the colleague, with police eventually finding indecent images on the iPhone and iPad they originally seized.

Claire Beards from the Crown Prosecution Service said: "The volume and nature of the indecent images that McGrath collected and stored showed his sustained and unlawful sexual interest in children.

"Some of the images were among the most serious and disturbing for which a person can be prosecuted."

MP: No words to express horror I felt

McGrath has lost his political career and feels ashamed to have let down the people who elected him as a councillor, David Claxton, defending, told St Albans Crown Court on Friday.

He added that McGrath felt "genuine remorse" and had started therapy to understand what motivated him after childhood trauma.

After McGrath was sentenced, Mr Bonavia said about his former aide's crimes: "There aren't words to express the horror I felt upon being made aware of this sickening criminality.

"As soon as I was made aware of the allegations facing Mr McGrath, I immediately took action to ensure the information was brought to the attention of the authorities and his employment was terminated immediately upon his arrest. I have not had any contact with him since.

"My thoughts today are with the victims and survivors of child sexual abuse. We must continue to do all we can to rid this vile scourge from our society and anyone found guilty of committing such abhorrent crimes must face the full force of the law."

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A Labour Party spokesperson added: "It is right that Conor McGrath has been sentenced for these heinous crimes.

"The Labour Party took swift action to suspend Mr McGrath as soon as these allegations came to our attention. He is no longer a member of the Labour Party."

In addition to his suspended jail sentence, McGrath was also ordered to complete 25 days of rehabilitation activity requirement and 150 hours of unpaid work. He will be subject to a Sexual Harm Prevention Order for 10 years.

In 2003, a young mother was dragged into bushes on an embankment next to the M61 motorway in Salford, Greater Manchester, in the early hours and beaten, choked and raped.

Security guard Andrew Malkinson was wrongly picked out at an identity parade. He was convicted and handed a life sentence with a minimum term of seven years in 2004, but stayed in jail for another decade because he maintained his innocence.

On Friday, a jury at Manchester Crown Court found Paul Quinn, 52, guilty of the rape.

'Two years too late': Read full police statement and apology after Quinn conviction here

Mr Malkinson said after Quinn was convicted: "I am content that the right result has finally been achieved for the victim, myself and the public. But the truth is that if the police had acted as they should have done, Paul Quinn could have been caught a long time ago.

"Instead, they wanted a quick conviction and I was a handy patsy forced to spend over 17 years in prison for his horrific crime.

"All those responsible for allowing this dangerous man to wander free whilst I was locked up must now be held to account."

Quinn's DNA had only made it into the system after police began retrospectively collecting samples from convicted sex offenders - as a 16-year-old in the 1990s, Quinn had been convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl.

At the time of the 2003 rape, Quinn had lived not far from the scene in Little Hulton, Salford.

Armed with Quinn's name, police launched a massive operation to build up a picture of his life, spanning the decades from his time in Salford to his new home in Exeter.

The father-of-six could offer no explanation to police for the presence of his DNA other than that he had been "highly promiscuous" in 2003, implying, according to the prosecution, that the victim may have been one of his many sexual partners.

He has other convictions for sexual offences and violence, and police say there is a "distinct possibility" he has committed others.

"A despicable, dangerous, disturbing character," is how Detective Chief Superintendent Rebecca McKendrick, the senior investigating officer for Greater Manchester Police, described Quinn.

"He was not only able to commit an extremely violent sexual attack in 2003 but was then able to sit back, live his life, have more children, carry on working, do all of those things knowing that Mr Malkinson is in prison for the offence that he committed."

Mr Malkinson, from Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, applied for his case to be referred for appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) on two occasions, but was turned down.

Now aged 60, Mr Malkinson was released from prison in December 2020 and his conviction was finally quashed by the Court of Appeal in 2023 after DNA evidence from the victim's vest top linked another man - Quinn - to the crime with a billion-to-one match in 2022.

On Friday, Quinn was convicted of two counts of rape - causing grievous bodily harm and attempting to choke or strangle his victim to render her unconscious while he carried out the attack - after a six-week trial at Manchester Crown Court.

'Missed opportunities to catch Quinn'

A public inquiry is now under way after a 2024 review found failings that could have exonerated Mr Malkinson a decade before he was eventually released from prison as further fallout from the case continues.

James Burley, who led the law charity APPEAL's investigation into Mr Malkinson's wrongful conviction, said: "We welcome the conviction of the true perpetrator of this appalling crime for which Andrew Malkinson spent over 17 years wrongly imprisoned.

"However, the grim reality is that Paul Quinn could have been caught years ago and certainly back in 2012, when his DNA was uploaded to the national database.

"By that point, the authorities had for some years had a searchable DNA profile recovered from the victim's clothing which did not match Mr Malkinson.

"Yet neither Greater Manchester Police nor the Criminal Cases Review Commission bothered to arrange a further search of the database until 2022, when APPEAL had presented further DNA evidence supporting Mr Malkinson's innocence.

"As a consequence, Mr Malkinson spent a further eight years wrongly imprisoned whilst a violent offender lived freely. New periodic DNA searching rules must be brought in to ensure this situation is never repeated."

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The charity urged that, in the future, prosecutions based solely on unsupported eyewitness identification evidence should be disallowed.

There was no DNA evidence linking Mr Malkinson to the crime, and when the victim gave evidence against him in 2003, she had doubts she had picked out the right man, but police dismissed this as "just trial nerves".

Five former Greater Manchester Police officers and one currently serving with the force are under investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), with both the chair and chief executive of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) having resigned.