[4][5][6] In April 2016, he was appointed chief executive of the Association of Police and crime commissioners; he resigned immediately after the May 2017 Manchester Arena bombing so that he could comment freely on the attack.

The first time one of Afzal's cases reached the national news was in August 1992, when the culprits were two supermarket employees who, following a works trip to the seaside, had sex in a crowded train back to London, and then lit up cigarettes in a no-smoking carriage.

[3][15] When he was promoted and moved to Manchester in 2011 he faced several high-profile cases, one involving a man killed while committing an aggravated burglary in which Afzal decided that the householder acted in reasonable self-defence.

[33][34] Afzal is best known for tackling cases involving violence against women and the sexual exploitation of children; the New York Times called him "Britain’s go-to prosecutor" for these areas.

They asked him to use his position to investigate, so he held a conference on the issues and set up a national database, cataloguing dozens of instances of potential crimes.

[15] 2005 saw the "honour" killing of Samaira Nazir by her brother and cousin; as area director for the CPS,[35] Afzal was responsible for the prosecution of her relatives, and described the beliefs that led to her murder as "tragic and outdated".

[36] He thought that such traditional attitudes would die out with the older immigrant generation, but by 2008, by which time he was the CPS's lead on honour-based violence, he realised that young men held the same controlling beliefs about "family honour" and "purity", and that education needed to start with primary school children to challenge this.

[39] A New York Times profile said: Being a man, a practising Muslim and the son of immigrants from the conservative tribal area in northwestern Pakistan might make Mr. Afzal an unlikely feminist in the eyes of some.

"[15]Afzal's work against grooming gangs led to criticism from "members of the Asian community" and a campaign by the far right to have him sacked and deported.

[39] Despite his actions being the catalyst for the successful prosecution of the Rochdale child sex abuse ring, he was targeted by the English Defence League and door-stepped by Nick Griffin, causing him to need police protection.

[41] Afzal put forward the theory, also proposed by Rochdale's then-MP Simon Danczuk, that one explanation for the profile of the town's abusers was the prevalence of Pakistani-origin men in the night-time economy, i.e. as taxi drivers and workers in take-away shops.

[47] In January 2018 he was appointed, alongside Yasmin Khan of the Halo Project, as an advisor to the Welsh government on issues around violence against women,[48] promising "to make Wales one of the safest places in Europe to be a woman.

"[44] He often speaks and writes about how much depends on the undervalued leadership of women in small charities, working to combat gender-based problems and extremism in their own communities.

[10] In December 2018, Afzal contacted the police in relation to English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson's interview with the 16-year-old alleged perpetrator of assaults on Syrian refugees at Almondbury Community School.

Some parents began protesting over the inclusion, fearing that adding lessons that include gay people were "promoting LGBT ways of life."

Afzal warned Johnson that government cutbacks meant that incarcerated terrorists were being released early; however, these individuals remained radicalised and thus were likely to commit acts of terror again.

[62] Afzal was appointed a Fellow of the University of Central Lancashire in 2013 for "raising public awareness of domestic violence, forced marriage and 'honour' based crimes".

[68][69] When he was director of the Crown Prosecution Service for London West, the TV police procedural Law & Order: UK used him "for guidance on plot lines and realism" and designed the set to mimic his office.

[18] The BBC three-part drama Three Girls, based on the Rochdale scandal, was broadcast on consecutive nights 16–18 May 2017 and featured the actor Ace Bhatti playing Afzal.

Afzal has been married three times, which he describes humorously as "multifaith engagement": "First to an Irish Catholic, then to an Indian Hindu and then to a British Sikh."

[71] Afzal's memoir "The Prosecutor",[24][72] published in April 2020, was described by Richard Scorer in the New Law Journal as "an inspiring account of the career of an outstanding public servant".