Uncle murdered niece in ‘honour killing’ after she refused arranged marriage
A man who murdered his niece with a metal spike in an ‘honour killing’ after she refused to go along with a forced marriage is facing a life sentence.
Mohammed Taroos Khan, 53, killed Somaiya Begum, 20, in a ‘traumatic’ attack at her home in Bradford on June 25 last year before dumping her on wasteland ‘like rubbish’.
The Leeds Beckett University student’s body was found 11 days later with a four-inch metal woodwork tool embedded in her chest.
Jurors at Bradford Crown Court deliberated for nine and a half hours before finding Khan guilty of murder.
He had already admitted perverting the course of justice by disposing of his niece’s body and trying to burn her phone.
Somaiya, who worked as a part-time carer, had been living ‘happily’ with another uncle and her grandmother in after her parents had been issued with a forced marriage protection order.
This followed attempts by her father to force her to marry a cousin from Pakistan ‘by threat of violence’ when she was 16 years old, the court heard.
Jason Pitter KC, prosecuting, said there were ‘fault lines’ in the family, adding that these were partly about ‘the way in which members of the family interpreted their cultural or religious obligations’.
He said the victim’s father and the defendant were both also subject to a restraining order prohibiting them from attending the address in Binnie Street.
But jurors heard Khan had cut a set of keys to the three-bedroom house on the day of the killing.
He visited the home three times that day in his Mitsubishi Space Wagon vehicle and had contacted his niece by phone.
Mr Pitter said: ‘At around 3.30pm, Somaiya Begum sent final messages to her close companion and school friend. Not long after that, her telephone was to cease meaningful use.
‘That coincided with the arrival of her uncle, the defendant, Mohammed Taroos Khan, at her home address in the minutes afterwards.
‘Whilst the prosecution cannot say precisely when Somaiya was killed, you can conclude that something significant had happened around or shortly after that point because there was no apparent further communication between Somaiya and anyone else after that time.’
Mr Pitter said Khan then went to Carter Gate Works industrial yard where he had living quarters, before returning to Binnie Street at 5.29pm.
And during the intervening period, the prosecutor told the court Khan had made searches online for ‘large, one tonne capacity, rubble bags including at the B&Q store’.
He said: ‘The CCTV footage showed him opening a door to a container. He can be seen to be wearing gloves at the time.
‘He then reversed his car up to the container entrance, however, the door was positioned in such a way as to obscure what he was doing from the CCTV camera.’
Somaiya’s remains were found on the industrial site several days later by police on July 6.
Mr Pitter said they were too decomposed to ascertain a cause of death, but added: ‘There was some evidence of potential damage to the structure of her neck.
‘In addition, a metal spike of about 11 cm in length, was found embedded in the right side of her chest puncturing her lung in such a way that it indicated that it was caused prior to her death.’
Khan’s defence barrister, Zafar Ali, described how in the Pathan community, which Somaiya belonged, ‘blood feuds’ could last generations.
And he suggested her ‘humiliated’ father had a ‘motive’ to kill her after she refused to participate in the marriage he had arranged for her with her cousin years earlier.
Speaking about Somaiya was slaying, Mr Pitter suggested that her uncle may have murdered her in an ‘honour killing’.
He said: ‘It may be that as part of it he advances issues in relation to the family’s culture and religion which may have been the misguided justification to kill her.
‘We suppose in the context of the inappropriately named “honour killing”. Whatever his motive, because it was him, even if others, as he may seek to say, were involved, it was not honourable.’
The judge, Mr Justice Garnham, will sentence Khan at the same court on Wednesday.
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