A 20-year-old woman was brutally murdered and had a metal spike embedded in her chest after refusing to marry her cousin, according to evidence presented in court. Somaiya Begum died on June 25, last year, after a "violent attack" at her home on Binnie Street in Bradford, jurors were told. Ms Begum's uncle, Mohammed Taroos Khan, 53, was responsible for her death, according to prosecutor Jason Pitter KC. Khan has denied murder but admitted perverting the course of justice by disposing of Miss Begum's body and burning her cellphone. Opening the prosecution case against Khan on Wednesday, he said: "She had met a traumatic death following a violent attack at her home, the nature of which was demonstrated by the metal spike which was embedded in her." Mr Pitter said Khan "bundled up" his niece's body and it was "dumped and left to rot and decompose on wasteland like rubbish, such that she was not recognisable". The body was discovered 11 days later, wrapped in a rug and tied with string, on land used as a dumping ground on Fitzwilliam Street in Bradford, according to the prosecutor. He stated that her body was so decomposed that no cause of death could be determined, but there was an 11cm long metal spike embedded in her chest that had punctured her lung. Mr Pitter told the jury that Miss Begum was living at the house in Binnie Street with another of her uncles, Dawood Khan, and her grandmother under the terms of a Forced Marriage Protection Order. This was due to her father's attempts to force her to marry a cousin from Pakistan "by threat of violence," he claimed. Khan had been barred from attending the address on Binnie Street and was the subject of a restraining order. He explained to the jury that this order had been in place since 2016, after he was convicted of punching his own daughter before holding a knife to her throat and threatening to "chop her up". Miss Begum, who also worked as a part-time caregiver, he said, was content at her grandmother's house. According to Mr Pitter, the defendant was seen on CCTV pulling up alongside a gap in a wall on Fitzwilliam Street and dragging a large and apparently heavy item from his car onto the waste ground. "Obviously, that was Somaiya," he told the jury. When Khan was shown the video, he "stated that he had some garbage and had been dumping it," according to the barrister. "In fact, that 'garbage,' to use his word, was Somaiya," he told the jury. Mr Pitter said that, it may be that Khan's defence "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,'" he said. "Whatever it was.... it was dishonorable. Zafar Ali KC, defending, told the jurors there will be times in the trial when they will be "utterly sickened" by what they hear, including "the terrible way (Miss Begum's) body was just dumped like rubbish". "No one could deny that the attack on Somaiya last June 25 was both terrible and unforgivable," Mr Ali said. "Mohammed Taroos Khan accepts that Somaiya Begum, his niece, was murdered, but he did not murder her," the barrister told the jury. "Until Somaiya was killed, he knew nothing about the death." Mr Ali said his client had been "summoned" to Binnie Street "to dispose of her body". Khan, of Thornbury Road in Bradford, denies murder but admits perverting justice. The trial should last three weeks.
By Covenantblog
