Innocent Asian families were repeatedly faced with armed police bursting into their homes after a sick troll, based in America, falsely accused them of being paedophiles, child-killers and violent criminals.

In the middle of the night officers swooped on family homes in Manchester, breaking down doors in dramatic scenes after being 'tipped off' people were being held hostage and killed.

In reality, families with young children and elderly relatives living with them were woken, terrified, in the dead of night.

Officers told the Manchester Evening News a year-long, international cyber-stalking campaign was carried out by a female hoaxer in the US - although they are yet to give her identity.

The caller researched details of her victims' lives on social media - and then used them to wage a campaign of hate, abuse and false allegations. She created fake internet profiles as well as making hoax 999 calls.

One victim - a woman who had suffered a miscarriage - was contacted by the vile troll, posing as her unborn child, saying: 'Why mommy, why you kill me?'.

Sangeetha Singh, Rizwan Mahmood and Rangzib Nazir were all victims of the troll who falsely accused them of killing and grooming

Other victims were accused of paedophilia, taking hostages at gunpoint, and carrying out a murder. As well as armed officers being deployed as a result of the lies, unarmed police have been called out on dozens of other occasions.

Now, victims have spoken out about how their lives were blighted - and criticised police for failing to stop it.

Promoter Rangzib Nazir, 51, from Oldham, told the M.E.N it was people in the entertainment business, whose details were public, who were targeted.

He was contacted on December 12 last year by someone who was interested in booking some acts for an event in the US.

Mr Nazir, owner of Lockdown Promotions, said he became worried when his contact revealed herself to be a woman - she had previously claimed to be a man - and suggested it would be 'fun' to put cameras in the room to secretly record the young acts.

When Rangzib told her he wanted nothing more to do with the deal, she is said to have vowed to 'destroy' him and call him a paedophile online.

He went on: 'She started putting messages up on social media that I'm a paedophile and my associates are paedophiles and that my colleagues are all part of a grooming group.'

Rangzib went to Oldham police station to make a report and even went onto Facebook Live at the station to explain what he was doing and saying the woman needed to be stopped.

'Again, she kept on saying I'm a paedophile and people should not work with me and tagging in newspapers, the police, the EDL and the FBI. She was telling people I had been arrested. She was ringing up promoters and artists and telling them not to work with me.'

The online abuse continued but reached a peak three months ago when his tormentor called police to report Rangzib was holding his family hostage at gunpoint.

First, he received a chilling message, part of which read: 'Don't worry, armed police are outside.'

Armed police swooped on Rangzib's house in Oldham at 3am.

Rangzib said: 'I've looked outside and seen blue lights and about 17 police cars. Some of them were armed. They've said 'armed police, get your hands up'.'

He woke his daughter, 18, son, 21 and parents, both in their 70s, to show the officers they had come to no harm.

A week later armed police visited his property a second time, also at 3am.

He was alerted by a text from the woman saying 'put the guns away' before seeing police outside his home.

(l-r) Sangeetha Singh, Rizwan Mahmood and Rangzib Nazir were all targeted over the internet. Sangeetha recorded one conversation when the hoaxer cruelly posed as her unborn child. The troll is heard to say: 'Why mommy, why you kill me?'

'I was in my room. I could see flashing lights. There were vans outside the house. One of the armed chaps had a rifle. My children came down. I had to wake them,' said Rangzib.

He says police visited him on four other occasions, although they were unarmed, following more false reports he was abusing children.

'They came into my house and wanted to search the rooms, which I didn't let them do. I just told the children to come downstairs. I invited them in but if I didn't I'm sure they would knock the door down. They say they want to speak to the children,' said Rangzib.

He says police telephoned him on 15 other occasions, again following false allegations he was molesting children.

Rangzib has repeatedly complained to GMP both about the woman who he says is terrorising him and their response to her reports.

He said: 'I think the woman needs to be sectioned or locked up.

'I'm angry. I feel I have been let down regarding my family's safety and well-being, especially if armed police are coming to the house.'

Rangzib says the US authorities have told him they have previously warned his tormentor about her behaviour but that she has continued regardless.

A DJ, Rizwan Mahmood, also known as Rzi Riz, found police had smashed down the front door of his home in Thorncomb Road, Moss Side, on September 20 after a false report that a child was being killed inside the property.

The married father, who has two boys aged seven and 13, said: 'We came home and they were inside the house. They were saying they had a report someone was killing a child in the house so they had to break in.'

He said it was the third police visit, following previous bogus reports when he had to show officers his wife and children had come to no harm.

He was targeted after showing online support for Lockdown Promotions, for whom he had been booked for a performance, according to Rizwan.

'At first I thought she was just crazy. Now I think she is a cyber-bully. She's got nothing else to do,' he said.

Bollywood entrepreneur Sangeetha Singh, 55, from Gorton, was phoned out of the blue in October last year by an American woman who accused her friend Rangzib Nazir of being a paedophile.

Sangeetha, as managing director of Sonaash Entertainment, manages the careers of her dancer daughters Aashan and Sonalia Kaur, both 22, who are both graduates.

It means they have a series of open social media profiles including on Facebook and that her mobile number was publicly available.

'I had no idea she had been sitting on my Facebook page for three years and she had picked up on little points about my life. She learned about my girls movements and about my husband and who my son was. She picked up on newspaper articles that had been written about me,' Sangeetha said.

Among them was a story in the M.E.N. which included details of how Sangeetha had miscarried.

Sangeetha recorded one conversation when the hoaxer cruelly posed as her unborn child.

The troll is heard to say: 'Why mommy, why you kill me?'

Sangeetha said: 'At one point she used to call me 15 to 20 times a day. While she was on the phone to me, I could hear her ringing on another line to Manchester police and complaining to them that I was assisting a paedophile. You could hear the police officer on the other line with a Manchester accent. After about a month I blocked her calls.'

She also learned the troll had posted pictures of one of her daughters into a chatroom, suggesting she was a prostitute and publishing the family's address in Gorton.

Aashan and Sonalia Kaur, both 22, are managed by their mother who was repeatedly contacted by the troll

Two days later the home was burgled, with thieves using a paving stone to smash through the front door before making off with jewellery and other valuables worth £15,000. A Mercedes and a Mini was also stolen although these were later found.

'At one point I went to Longsight police station but they just said they didn't have the resources,' said Sangeetha.

'In Manchester alone we know there are 50 people who have been trolled like this. There could be more. We know there are people in London and America and India.

'I've reached the point now where I'm not afraid of it. I was but not now. There's a pattern here. We are all artists or promoters in the entertainment industry. It seems to me this woman is suffering from a personality disorder.

'She may be schizophrenic or bipolar. But I feel angry because she's tried to do harm to so many people. For six months I was scared of posting anything. If I did post a flyer she would phone people up and tell them lies about my daughters. For a mother, it's very upsetting.

'Everybody goes on about harassment but when you are in the thick of it there's nobody to help you, absolutely nobody. She just torments people and gets a buzz out of it.

'The police do amazingly stressful job. I think they just shut down when they hear it's social media but when it gets so intense they should step up.'

Music promoter Gee Hussain, 43, from Derby, was contacted by the woman last year about a $20,000 deal to bring an artist to the US.

He said he 'became a victim' after he baulked at outrageous claims she made about Rangzib, a man from the same industry he knew.

He, too, received a visit to his home in a village near Derby by armed police at 4.30am on October 6 following a bogus report he had raped a child.

Gee said: 'I've dozed off on the sofa. And at about 5.30am I get a knock on the door. They had handguns. One of the guys had a machine gun. I was supposed to be holding my wife hostage.'

It was the fourth police visit that week, he explained, although the only time they turned up armed.

To this day he says he doesn't know how his tormentor obtained his home address.

The US based hoaxer followed the movements of sisters Aashan and Sonalia Kaur and made menacing calls to their mother

The 22-year-old sisters from Manchester have publicly open pages because of their work but the troll who was targeting Asian families used it against them

A GMP spokesperson, said: 'Officers from Oldham have been investigating a number of hoax calls over the past 12 months that are believed to have been made by one individual from the USA.

'On five of those occasions, police immediately responded as a grade one call, after receiving information that lives were in danger.

'On each occasion, it was verified there were no concerns for people's safety and measures have now been put in place to authenticate each call made to police.

'We are working with the authorities in the USA and exploring all opportunities to resolve this issue.

'Both parties involved have been previously spoken to and advised not to communicate with each other.

'Hoax calls take up a lot of vital resources and prevent us from dealing with genuine emergencies where our response could be a matter of life and death.'

A Derbyshire police spokesman said: 'In recent weeks, we received a number of calls about alleged incidents at an address in Littleover Lane, Derby.

'Each call to police is treated on its own merits and dealt with appropriately at the time, and so we visited the address and spoke to the occupant on a small number of occasions.

'However we believe the calls for service to have been hoax calls and malicious in nature, and that there were no concerns for people at the address.

'Those malicious calls are now part of a wider investigation.'