Man murdered mother-in-law after she helped wife escape their arranged marriage

A man who murdered his mother-in-law after she helped his wife escape their troubled arranged marriage has been jailed for life.

Muhammed Tafham, 31, stabbed mother-of-five Rahman Begum to death at her home in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, in February, days after the victim’s daughter left him.

He denied the charge, saying the 46-year-old had had killed herself while he visited, and he fled in panic without raising the alarm.

But a jury at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court took just over three hours to convict him of murder.

The Crown said his explanation was “transparent nonsense” and the defendant had attacked his mother-in-law with a 12in kitchen knife in a rage, then placed the weapon in her hand to make the death appear as suicide.

A post-mortem examination found she suffered three major stab wounds to the front of her body and one of them passed through her breast bone and through her heart.

Pathologist Dr Charles Wilson told the jury that he thought “severe force” would have been required to inflict the latter wound and it would have been “very difficult” for Ms Begum to have done that herself.

The victim’s daughter Aysha Gulraiz, 25, entered into an an arranged marriage in Pakistan with Tafham, a cousin on her father’s side, in 2013.

He only joined her in the UK in September 2016 and the court heard the couple needed to live together for three years so Tafham could stay in the UK.

But the pair argued constantly and eventually Ms Gulraiz asked him for a divorce, which he refused.

Ms Gulraiz, 25, left Tafham to move back in with her long-term boyfriend in Bradford on February 4.

Ms Begum helped trick the defendant into leaving their home in Clement Royds Street while her daughter returned with her boyfriend and put her possessions into bags before the couple drove off.

She said her mother told her boyfriend: “Look after my daughter” and had told her: “Don’t ruin your life, go live it.”

Giving evidence, Ms Gulraiz said she had fallen out with her father over her relationship with Tafham, but said her mother never asked her to stay with the defendant.

She said her mother had never accused her of bringing shame to the family and she had told her “wherever my daughters are happy I’m happy”.

The court heard Ms Begum complained to her GP last November that she was feeling low in mood but had no record of a formal diagnosis of depression or any other psychiatric disorder.

Tafham said he heard a scream from the kitchen while he was in the living room at Clement Royds Street and then discovered Mr Begum lying face down. He said he turned her body around and pulled the knife from her chest.

He told the jury he thought he would get the blame for the death and that he did not know England’s emergency number.

Tafham claimed Mrs Begum had spoken to her daughters previously about thinking of killing herself.

He denied disconnecting the property’s CCTV system shortly before he left the house in a bid to evade detection.

He could not explain how Ms Begum’s blood was on a latex glove later recovered from his bedroom.

Tafham was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 21 years on Wednesday.

Senior Investigating Officer Duncan Thorpe of Greater Manchester Police’s Major Incident Support Unit, said: “When Rahman opened the door she had no idea that her son-in-law, who she’d spent so much time with and welcomed into her family, would brutally attack her.

“Tafham didn’t just take a cherished mother, wife and friend away, he completely destroyed a loving and happy family with his abhorrent actions that day.

“The whole community have felt this loss and I am glad that we have been able to secure a conviction.

“Your family are meant to be the people you can depend on the most and Tafham will now spend the next 21 years behind bars thinking about how he betrayed every person he was meant to care about.”

Press Association contributed to this report