Mohammed Taroos Khan sentenced to at least 25 years in prison for murder of his niece Somaiya Begum in Bradford

Somaiya Begum
Born: 2001
Murdered: July 6, 2020
Age: 20 years old
Residence: Bradford, United Kingdom
Origin: Bangladesh
Children: none
Perpetrator: Mohammed Taroos Khan, 53 years old

On March 14, 2023, Mohammed Taroos Khan, a 53-year-old Bengali British man, was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 25 years for the murder of his 20-year-old niece, Somaiya Begum, for refusing to cooperate in a forced marriage.

Somaiya, a university student, lived with her grandmother and uncle in Bradford. A court had issued a protection order against forced marriage after her father tried to force her into marriage with a cousin in Pakistan.

Somaiya went missing on June 25, 2020, and her body was found wrapped in a carpet at a vacant lot in Bradford on July 6, 2020. CCTV footage showed Mohammed Taroos Khan dragging his niece's body out of his car and dumping it on a vacant lot. Pathologists were unable to determine the exact cause of death due to the decomposition of her body, but an 11-cm-long metal nail was found in her chest, which had punctured her lung.

During the trial, prosecutors argued that the murder could be explained as an "improper honor killing," but Jason Pitter KC, Khan's attorney, stated that "whatever it was... it was not honorable." Khan admitted to disrupting the course of justice by hiding Somaiya's body and attempting to burn her cell phone but denied the charge of murder.

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