File photo used for representation. (Reuters)

LONDON: A “sexually obsessed” British Pakistani builder kidnapped his 20-year-old British Indian niece and a 21-year-old female, raped both of them and then murdered the 20-year-old, leaving her body stuffed in the deep freeze before attempting to murder the 21-year-old who survived the ordeal, the Old Bailey here heard on Thursday.

The Old Bailey heard how Mujahid Arshid (who also uses the surname Hussain), age 33, of no fixed address, a British citizen of Pakistani heritage, kidnapped the two women from a property in southwest London with his accomplice Vincent Tappu, aged 28, a British citizen of mixed racial heritage who lives in Ealing, who worked for Arshid as a labourer.

On the morning of July 19, 2017, wearing balaclavas and gloves, the men entered the property where 20-year-old British Indian Celine Dookhran and the 21-year-old woman were, stuffed socks into their mouths and covered them with tape, tied their hands and feet together, and wrapped each of them in a builder’s dustsheet, the court heard.

Dookhran was born in the UK to a British Indian mother and a Caribbean Indian father. Her parents later split up and her mother, an Indian Muslim, remarried a Pakistani.

Prosecuting, Crispin Aylett QC said Arshid had a sexual fixation with both young women and grabbed large quantities of their underwear as well as their clothes and personal belongings to give the impression they had run away together in a hurry. Wrapped in dustsheets Tappu then helped Arshid get them out of the house and into Arshid’s pickup truck. Arshid then drove the women, bound and gagged in the back of his truck, to a detached six-bedroomed property near Kingston, the court heard.

About a month earlier, the owner of that house had asked Arshid to do some work on his property and given him the keys. It was unoccupied and was set to be for some time. Two days earlier Arshid had installed a chest-high deep freezer in the kitchen of the house, which the prosecution said was to prevent the smell of decomposing bodies. Once inside he tied the young women to pipes in the utility room, whilst armed with a lock knife.

He first released the 21-year old, took her upstairs to a bedroom and raped her, then brought her back, and then raped Dookhran in the same manner. Then he took Dookhran back upstairs and in the bathroom of the house he cut her throat. She died from the combined effect of the restriction of airways due to the sock and the blood she lost, the jury was told.

Arshid put Dookhran’s body into the deep freezer and locked it with a padlock he had brought with him. Arshid then took the other female upstairs and he cut her throat as well. He told her she would be dead within 10 minutes but she did not die from her injuries. “It appears she was able to talk him round promising they could be together, and he appears to have fallen for that ruse. Up until that point it must have been the defendant’s intention to murder both women and conceal both bodies in the deep freezer of the unoccupied house in that way it might be many months before anyone found out,” Aylett said.

Arshid drove the other woman back to southwest London where she managed to get to hospital and alert the police. “The police found the house, forced the deep freezer open using a crowbar and inside was the body of Celine who had been dead for considerable time,” the prosecutor said.

Arshid was later arrested in Folkestone, Kent, and the key to the deep freezer padlock was found on him.

Both women were having sexual relations with boyfriends. “The defendant had been hatching his murderous plan for several weeks before he brought it into effect. He must have realised the two young women he adored were slipping away from him and if he could not have them no one else could,” the prosecutor said.

The court also heard that Dookhran had fallen out with her parents over her choice of boyfriend — a man called Omar from Libya — as her stepfather, who is Pakistani, wanted her be with someone from Pakistan . A family meeting to put pressure on them to end their relationship had been called on July 18.

Arshid appeared in the dock dressed in a red and white checked shirt and glasses. He followed the trial intently, occasionally taking notes. He denies sexual assault, kidnap, rape, attempted murder and murder. Also in the dock was Tappu, dressed in a blue suit with a maroon tie, who denies kidnap. The trial continues.

