Man strangled wife in front of her TikTok lover then dumped body in river

A chef who throttled his wife in front of their young children and her TikTok lover then stuffed her body inside a suitcase and threw it into a river is facing a life sentence.

Aminan Rahman, 47, strangled 24-year-old Suma Begum with her scarf at a flat in Docklands, east London, on the night of April 29, 2023.

He was video calling her boyfriend Shahin Miah, 24, who was living in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), while he attacked her.

Ms Begum’s lifeless body could be seen in the background as Rahman shouted at Mr Miah: ‘Because of you this has happened.’

But she may have been still alive when Rahman crammed her body into the suitcase and threw her body into the River Lea as his young son looked on.

Her body was found 10 days later by a mudlarker after being found washed up by the side of the Thames.

On Wednesday, Rahman was found guilty of murder. He had earlier admitted preventing a lawful burial.

The court heard that Ms Begum had married the defendant in an arranged Islamic ceremony over the phone in 2019.

In 2020, she travelled from Bangladesh to live with the restaurant worker in Somerset and they had two children.

A year later, Ms Begum met Mr Miah via social media app TikTok, later moving on to WhatsApp.

About seven or eight months into their ‘intimate, sexual’ online relationship, Mr Miah found out she was married to Rahman, he said.

He described how he told Rahman of the relationship, but the lovers stayed together and Ms Begum remained married.

Prosecutor Jocelyn Ledward KC had told jurors: ‘It is clear this young woman was no longer happy in her marriage, she was fairly openly in a relationship with another man, and she had expressed the desire to leave the defendant, something about which neither he nor her family were happy.

‘But whether he was motivated by rage, shame, or pure jealousy, or a more complex mix of cultural expectations and emotions, may not matter.

‘The prosecution case is that on the night of April 29-30, shortly before midnight, Shahin Miah witnessed the murder of Suma Begum by the defendant on a video call which he recorded.

‘What he observed part of was the deliberate strangulation of Suma Begum days before her body was found.’

Mr Miah sobbed in court as he described the video call.

Speaking through an interpreter, he said: ‘She wanted to run away and he then grabbed her throat.’

There were ‘three screaming sounds’ before the video froze and nothing more could be seen after Rahman’s initial lunge.

In a second video call from Rahman that night, the defendant told Mr Miah: ‘Look, I have killed (Ms Begum) and now you get ready.’

Mr Miah told jurors: ‘I saw that frothing was coming out of Suma’s mouth and he showed me on the video and he was swearing at me.’

Ms Ledward said that either Ms Begum was dead when she was put in the suitcase or had drowned in the water.

Either way, her death was no accident, having followed threats to harm her and then kill her and her lover, Ms Ledward said.

She added: ‘Within minutes, he deliberately disposed of her body in such a way that he hoped, no doubt, her body would simply be washed out to sea and never found, and that the fiction he began to create almost immediately, that she had simply abandoned him and the children after a minor argument, would be believed.’

The court was told that the victim’s two children, then aged four months and two years, were in the bedroom where the attack took place.

Giving evidence, Rahman accepted killing Ms Begum but claimed he never intended to harm her and had acted in the defence of the older child.

He claimed Ms Begum had threatened to kill the two-year-old and had thrown the child against a wall.

The prosecution rejected his claim.

Rahman had also been accused of attacking Ms Begum on an earlier occasion last February.

She made a video displaying scratches on her neck and told Mr Miah that the defendant had taken her ‘breathings’ away, saying: ‘He almost killed me around my neck.’

Mr Justice Bennathan remanded Rahman, formerly of Bridgwater in Somerset, into custody to be sentenced on July 31.

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