Life for ‘greedy’ pair who plotted murder
TWO ‘greedy’ lovers who plotted the murder of a ‘ vulnerable’ man in order to profit financially from his death have been jailed for life.
Muhammed Arif, 45, bludgeoned father-oftwo Mohammed Yousaf to death as he slept in bed in his rented flat in Accrington last September in a ‘brutal and cowardly’ act.
Arif, of Washington Street, Accrington had planned the murder with his lover, and Mr Yousaf’s new wife, Rukhsana Bibi, 38, and together they had persuaded him to take out a life insurance policy worth £244,000 that would have benefited Bibi. Both had denied the charge of murder but were unanimously found guilty by the jury at Preston Crown Court after a five-week trial.
Bibi, of Wood Street, Todmorden, cradled her head in her hands in the dock as she was told through a translator she had been found guilty of murder while Arif stared straight ahead as judge William Davis said his children ‘would not see their father for many years’.
Mr Yousaf, 65, sus- tained 12 ‘significant lacerations’ to his head which were caused by ‘blunt force trauma’ and a craft knife stab wound to his neck in the attack, the court was told. He had recently returned from a two-month trip to Pakistan but was found dead by his landlord at his home on Granville Street on the morning of September 21.
Sentencing both to life imprisonment with Arif to serve a minimum of 32 years and Bibi 28 years behind bars, Judge Davis told the court the pair’s ‘cruel act’ had ‘shattered’ the lives of three families.
He said: “Mr Yousaf’s family has obviously been destroyed and there are now two disadvantaged adult children of his who have lost their father who quite clearly doted on him.
“And all, I am satisfied, because you were greedy, you found a vulnerable old man and over many months you planned to take the money that he had readily available and then engineered a position whereby he had life insurance on which you could claim when he died. Die, that is, at your hands.
“The two of you were people Mr Yousaf trusted. He could not have imagined the two of you were planning his death. This is a case of murder for monetary gain with many aggravating factors.
“Mr Arif you are the one who actually committed this brutal and cowardly act, bludgeoning an old man to death as he slept in his bed.”
With respect to Bibi, Judge Davis told the court that he would make a reduction in her sentence as she was not the one who had committed ‘that bloody violence’ but that she had ‘engineered the situation’ so that it could come about.
Arif ’s wife, Amna Arif, 43, also of Washington Street, earlier admitted at Preston Crown Court conspiring to pervert the course of justice by giving false statements to the police about her husband’s whereabouts over the weekend of September 17 and 18 when the murder took place.