Guilty, uncle who murdered niece in ‘ honour killing’
A MISOGYNISTIC uncle was yesterday convicted of murdering his niece who had refused to enter an arranged marriage. Mohammed Taroos Khan, 53, had been previously banned by a court order from his mother’s house in Bradford where undergraduate Somaiya Begum was living under a Forced Marriage Protection Order.
The 20-year- old had moved from her parents’ home for her safety two years earlier after her father had used violent threats in an attempt to force her to marry a cousin in Pakistan. He also banned her from college, watching TV and wearing Western clothes.
In the eyes of her father and members of her wider family, the ‘dishonour’ of refusing the arranged marriage was compounded by the FMPO. These legal devices were brought in 15 years ago to protect vulnerable girls and women.
So Khan turned up out of the blue and murdered his niece in the living room. He embedded a 4in-long metal spike into her back and probably strangled her.
The murder took place last June as Khan’s brother, Dawood, slept two floors above, Bradford Crown Court heard. Khan hid the body inside a rolled up carpet, which he collected the next morning after his brother went to work.
Khan was arrested after Ms Begum was reported missing. CCTV showed him dragging the carpet containing the body to the West Yorkshire wasteland and dumping it ‘like rubbish’.
Her decomposed body was discovered by police 11 days after she vanished.
The jury was told Khan had admitted perverting the course of justice by burning his niece’s mobile phone and hiding her body to cover up the crime.
However, he insisted he had nothing to do with her murder and gave no evidence at the trial. His barrister Zafar Ali, KC, pointed the finger at Ms Begum’s father, Yaseen, who had a history of violence towards women in his family and felt disgraced by his daughter’s refusal to go ahead with the arranged marriage.
Three-times married Khan had been convicted of battery against his own daughter, Kynath. In 2016 Khan hit her, held a knife to her throat and threatened to ‘chop her up’.
The subsequent conviction at Bradford Magistrates Court resulted in a restraining order being imposed that banned him from going to the family home. He was still banned when he turned up one afternoon to ‘see his mother’ – the day he killed his niece.
Ms Begum was a biomedical student at Leeds Beckett University but also worked as a carer for her grandmother.
The jury unanimously found Khan guilty of murder and he will be given a mandatory life sentence today.
‘Dumped her body like rubbish’