Brute who beat wife with bat and made her drink bleach is spared prison...to play cricket
A CRICKETER who battered his wife with his own bat and forced her to drink bleach has been spared jail after a judge said he was not convinced she was vulnerable.
Mustafa Bashir, 34, from Pakistan, was said to have left Fakhara Karim, 33, fearing for her life during their stormy marriage after rows over her western clothing and what she could spend her money on.
But Judge Richard Mansell QC said he did not believe she was vulnerable because she was ‘an intelligent woman with a network of friends’.
Instead, he handed down an 18month suspended sentence last week after Bashir claimed he had been offered a professional contract with top club Leicestershire on condition he did not go to prison. But the former county cricket champions yesterday denied ever having spoken to the cricketer, who currently plays in a local league in Oldham.
Last night a spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service said it was aware of the development in the case and was ‘currently considering our options’. Julian Young of London criminal defence law- yers Tuckers said Bashir could be recalled for a another sentencing hearing. He said: ‘Judges take being misled very seriously.’
Last night, domestic abuse charities hit out at the ‘soft sentence’, branding the leniency as a ‘shocking ignorance around the impact of domestic violence on women’.
Manchester Crown Court heard how Bashir had once grabbed his wife by the neck on a day out in Rochdale and was only stopped when a member of the public threatened to call police.
In April 2014, he was said to have forced her to take tablets, drink bleach and told her to kill herself. Prosecutor Roger Brown said Bashir had once struck his wife on the back with his cricket bat when he felt she had taken too long talking to a friend on the phone.
During the incident on New Year’s Eve 2014, he warned her: ‘If I hit you with this bat with my full power then you would be dead.’
Miss Karim went to police and told them: ‘I did fear for my life, he told me he was going to kill me.’ She told how she had been ‘confident, active and humorous’ before she met Bashir in their native Pakistan and married him in 2013. She said the abuse had drained her confidence and she was ‘not back to the person I was before’.
As well as the suspended sentence, Bashir – who admitted assault occasioning actual bodily harm – was ordered to pay £1,000 costs and banned from contacting Miss Karim indefinitely. He was also told to attend a workshop on ‘building better relationships’.
Bashir’s lawyer Hugh McKee said: ‘He says that he got into debt to allow her to go on holiday with her friends. He struggled and continues to struggle and to this day he hasn’t been able to give an explanation about what led him to do what he did.’
Judge Mansell told the cricketer: ‘This relationship started well but you began controlling her and how she spent her money. She would buy clothes that were of a western style which you disapproved of and called said her friends were “English slag girls”.
‘But I am not convinced she was a vulnerable person. Sometimes women who moved from their country become trapped in a relationship where they lose their support network of family and friends.
‘This is not the case here. She is plainly an intelligent woman with a network of friends and did go on to graduate from university with a 2:1 and a masters.’ The judge said Bashir’s current partner had not complained of violence.
But Sandra Horley CBE of the charity Refuge, said: ‘ What a woman does, her level of education or the number of friends she has makes no difference. Domestic violence is a devastating crime. The perpetrator’s employment prospects should make no difference either.’
Polly Neate of Women’s Aid said: ‘The a softer sentence on the basis that “she is not a vulnerable woman” is shocking.’
‘He told me he was going to kill me’ ‘She’s plainly an intelligent woman’