Father Strangles Daughter to Death After She Shoplifts Condoms
A Muslim man named Asadulla Khan has confessed to strangling his 19-year-old daughter, Lareeb, to death with his bare hands after learning from police she had been caught shoplifting condoms. It became apparent to Khan that she was going to have sex with her forbidden boyfriend.
After the murder, Khan and his wife Shazia dressed their dead daughter, who was a dental technician, in her clothes. They wheeled her corpse in a wheelchair from their high-rise apartment to a secluded embankment in their home city of Darmstadt in Germany. There, they tipped the corpse so it would fall down.
In court, Khan, 51, cried while admitting he’d killed Lareeb because she had brought ‘dishonour’ to the family with her love for a boy he didn’t approve of. He explained that he and his wife were wed in an arranged marriage and he wanted the same for her.
Khan and his wife, originally from Pakistan, are on trial for murder at the State Court in Darmstadt.
In a surprising turn, Shazia, 41, claimed she was helpless to help save her daughter and had no way of fighting her husband. She said she had nothing to do with the killing.
“I couldn’t stop him,” she said. “I have rheumatism and didn’t have the strength to fight him off. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t…Lareeb stayed away from the home for several nights in a row and stopped wearing the headscarf. One day we received a letter from the police saying she had been caught trying to steal condoms. At this point it became clear that there was sexual contact. When I showed the letter to my husband he snapped.”
Shazia also said that on the night of the murder Lareeb fought with her father and hit him. He later crept into her room as she slept and strangled her while she was sleeping.
The court heard how the parents sent Lareeb’s sister Nida, 14, to a relative on the evening of the murder in January this year. This fact hinted at premeditation.
Nida, Lareeb’s sister, gave a surprising testimony, which will be used as evidence against both her parents. She accused her mother of lying about her powerlessness to save Lareeb, saying she was just as strict as their father and often struck both of them.
Shazia held out her arms to her daughter Nida when she appeared in court on Friday but Nida refused to acknowledge her.
Nida said: “My Mama was not suppressed, she could do what she wanted. She used to hit me with a stick. We were never allowed to talk about her boyfriend. My father used to say my sister should be forcibly married in Pakistan.”
Nida is now in therapy and wants nothing to do with her parents anymore.
Khan, who speaks no German, repeatedly said he ‘loved’ his daughter.
The trial continues.
