Were house arson victims mistaken for another family?
Former tenants may have been target
A DOCTOR and her four children killed in a suspected arson attack may have been victims of mistaken identity, police said last night.
Detectives believe their house was deliberately attacked and have traced previous tenants in case it was they who were the intended targets.
They have ruled out a random attack by a serial arsonist or any connection to a spate of minor car or bin fires on the estate where Sabah Usmani, 44, and her children Hira, 12, Sohaib, 11, Muneeb, nine, and Rayyan, six, died on Monday.
Miss Usmani, her husband Abdul Shakoor and their five children moved to the rented house in Harlow, Essex, just over a year ago from Winchester, Hampshire.
Police are talking to former tenants and the female owner who lived there for a number of years.
Dr Shakoor, 45, an endocrinologist and hospital registrar, suffered severe smoke inhalation as he fought to save his family.
On Monday night, he was transferred from the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow to Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford to be close to his only surviving daughter, Maheen, three, who is in a critical condition at a specialist burns unit.
Yesterday, police specialists were carrying out forensic examinations of the home and a neighbour’s car that was torched at the same time.
Speaking at the scene, Chief Superintendent Luke Collison said: ‘I’m convinced the answer to this very serious crime lies within the community. If anyone has noticed anything suspicious, and that would include a
‘He is inconsolable. Any father would be’
change in someone’s behaviour, we would ask them to come forward.
‘There is nothing to suggest we are dealing with a serial arsonist.’
When asked about other incidents of arson in the area, such as two abandoned cars that were set alight in a nearby street in the spring, he said: ‘We’ve reviewed the cars that were set alight in April and this [house fire] is an entirely different MO [modus operandi].
‘There have been six offences of arson in south Harlow over the last six months and these are not untypical for such a town and we would class these as minor.’
Although a racial motivation for the attack has not been ruled out, he said there was no evidence to support it. Neighbours said debt collectors had come to the house pursuing former tenants. A recruitment company run by the female owner closed in 2009. A cage-fighter reportedly lived there after she let out the house in 2008.
Yesterday friends and colleagues of the family paid their respects at the scene, and pupils from the children’s school, Abbotsweld Primary, came to lay flowers.
Diabetes consultant Dr Purnami De Silva, who worked with Dr Shakoor at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, spoke of the shock staff had felt in treating one of their own and his family. She said: ‘It is unfathomable. I saw him yesterday and he was inconsolable. Anybody who is a father or husband who has their family taken away would be.
‘Only weeks ago he and his whole family went to the Olympic torch relay when it came through Harlow.
‘He had a real sense of pride in this country and felt a sense of belonging. He said it was Britain at its best.
‘It is devastating to find that we are now under circumstances that perhaps show this country at its worst.’