Student murdered by Uncle for Refusing Forced Marriage

A court heard that a woman was murdered by her uncle and “dumped like rubbish” for refusing a forced marriage.

Twenty-year-old Somaiya Begum’s body was discovered wrapped in a rug on wasteland near Fitzwilliam Street, Bradford, on July 6, 2022.

At Bradford Crown Court, prosecutors said her uncle Mohammed Taroos Khan, aged 53, killed her at her home in Binnie Street on June 25.

Khan denies murder but has admitted perverting the course of justice.

Jason Pitter KC said that university student Ms Begum was living at the house with another uncle and her grandmother under the terms of a Forced Marriage Protection Order.

He said this was due to attempts by her father to force her to marry a cousin from Pakistan “by threat of violence”.

Mr Pitter said there were “fault times” 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 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”.

Mr Pitter said: “We suppose in the context of the inappropriately named ‘honour killing’.

“Whatever it was… it was not honourable.”

When Ms Begum’s body was discovered it was so decomposed it was not possible to find a cause of death but there was an 11cm metal spike embedded in her chest which had punctured her lung.

The defendant was caught on CCTV pulling up alongside a gap in a wall on Fitzwilliam Street and dragging a large and apparently heavy item from the car onto the waste ground.

Mr Pitter told the jury: “That was obviously Somaiya.”

Zafar Ali KC, defending, told the jury that 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”.

He said:

“No one could deny that the attack on Somaiya on June 25 last year was both terrible and unforgivable.”

But Mr Ali added: “Mohammed Taroos Khan accepts that Somaiya Begum, his niece, was murdered but he did not murder her.

“He knew nothing about the death until after Somaiya had been killed.”

Mr Ali said his client had been “summoned” to Binnie Street “to dispose of her body”.

The trial is expected to last three weeks.