176. The Murder of Saima Khan

On some nights, life moves quietly. The kind of quiet that feels ordinary, almost comforting. Streets settle, houses dim, and the world eases into its familiar rhythm. But every so often, a night begins like that, but ends in a way no one could have ever imagined. In the town of Lutton, one such night unfolded. Nothing seemed out of place. Nothing warned of the shock that was about to ripple through an entire community.

But behind a closed front door, in the span of a few irreversible moments, everything changed. A life was ended and the questions that would follow would hold the nation in disbelief. This is the story of that one night. that one house and the one woman behind it all. This is the story of Saima Khan.

hi everyone welcome to the desi crime podcast a show where we dive deep into some of the craziest cases from around south asia i'm your host ashwarya and i'm arian and the case that i have for you today is one that is still remembered for its sheer brutality

Aishwarya, you said this case is based out of Lutton, right? Yeah, that's right. I have a lot of Lutton-based trauma in my life because I once booked a flight to London. And the cheapest, I think it was the Virgin Atlantic option or the Ryanair option said, you know, it was one fifth the price of the British Airways flight. So obviously I'm going to fly this. It says it lands in London. It was London-Lutton Airport, which is two hours

or a 200 pound Uber ride away from Heathrow Airport where my connecting flight was. So that's how I know Lutton. That was the brutality that I faced. I'm sure this case would be genuinely harrowing.

um but before we get on with the case i want to give a huge shout out to our community and um just the guest we had on last week officer rakesh maria the response to that episode has been awesome uh we want to do a part two you guys want us to do a part two and turns out mr maria also is kind of down for it so maybe next year we break

that to you um so if you have guests that are insane that you want featured comment that in this episode so we can you know invite them and see if we can do something and then here's me just begging again become a patron on patreon.com slash desi studios or join the youtube membership so that we can make things like that happen we can fly the team from a to b and record these awesome episodes just for you guys your support

keeps the engines here running and with that on with the harrowing story from let's get on with it late at night on the 23rd of may 2016 a quiet street in lutton is pierced by the sound of sirens Blue lights flicker against the brick walls and drawn curtains as police vehicles screech to a halt on Overstone Road. Neighbours peer from behind those curtains into the dimly lit street, drawn by the commotion.

Just moments earlier, some of them heard a chilling sound. A woman's screams piercing through the night. Now, officers rushed towards a modest house from which those screams came, fearing what they'll find inside. At the threshold of the house stands a young woman, trembling and distraught, her clothes dishevelled. She is Sabah Khan, 27 years old, and she's frantic. Her dark eyes are wide with terror and shock.

When the police reach her, she is nearly incoherent, pointing inside and pleading for help. It was a burglary, she cries out, voice cracking. Someone broke in. My sister, my sister is hurt. Inside the house, the scene is one of unimaginable horror. In the front hallway, sprawled on the floor amid a slick of blood, lies the body of a woman, Saima Khan.

34 years old, is motionless on her back, still dressed in her work clothes. The hall light is off. Oddly, the house is dark, except for the police torches now illuminating the crime scene. As officers carefully step closer, the metallic scent of blood hangs thick in the air. Saima's white blouse is soaked red from her own blood. There are gashes and stab wounds visible across her chest and arms. One officer kneels to feel for a...

pulse that isn't there. Saima is gone. Sabha clutches the door frame, sobbing that she found her sister like this. She keeps repeating the same story between sobs. An intruder must have attacked Saima and fled. A smash window at the back of the house suggests forced entry. Shards of glass litter the carpet, glittering under flashlight beams. The police notes this quickly. Could this have been a home invasion gone wrong?

Even as paramedics arrive, it's tragically clear that Saima's life cannot be saved. The sheer brutality of the scene stuns the first responders. In the harsh glare of emergency lights, they count wound after wound after wound across Saima's body. dozens of stab injuries across her torso and neck. Later, they will tally 68 separate knife wounds on her lifeless body. One deep slash has cut clear through her throat, severing vital arteries.

personal kind of killing, the kind rarely seen in a burglary. Upstairs, faint cries can be heard. Saima's four young children had been fast asleep in their beds moments ago, but they awoke to the sounds of violence and their mother's screams. The eldest, only around seven years old, reportedly called out to her mother during the attack from upstairs, but was too afraid to come.

come down. Now as police secure this crime scene, they escort the children out of their homes one by one. The kids faces are puffy from sleep and tears. They're confused clutching at the officers who carry them past the nightmare in the hallway. One by one, the children are taken to a neighbour's house for safety, shielded from the sight of their mother's body. The youngest is just a toddler, barely old enough to understand anything that happened at all.

Sabha, still seemingly hysterical, places a shaking phone call to her parents, who are out for the evening. In between sobs, she urges them to come home immediately. Something terrible has happened to Saima. Her parents and Saima's husband, Hafeez Rahman, had been attending a family funeral that night. Now they rush back, panic mounting with each passing second, unaware of what is awaiting them.

Ash, when you started describing the nature of the injuries, the 64 odd stabs and gash wounds, my head was rushing immediately to this being a case of a crime of passion.

and one likely inflicted by the male partner or in this case being the husband and the father of the four children and now you're dropping a bombshell that the father slash the husband wasn't there at all he was in fact at the funeral of

Her relative, correct? And with his in-laws, yeah, that's right. And I'm confused. A. why is she not at that funeral secondly why is her sister not at a funeral when the relative that has whose funeral it is is theirs so we'll kind of get into this later as well but that evening Saima had work and so she couldn't have left for the funeral when the rest of the family

did and because Saima had work and everyone else was leaving for the funeral someone needed to stay home to take care of the kids and a lot of the time that person that de facto sort of caretaker when Saima was busy used to be Sabha and so everyone thought that you know the rest of the family can go attend the funeral.

funeral while Saima is out at work, Sabha can stay back with the kids and the plan was that Saima was eventually going to return from work, check on the kids once and then go meet the family at the post-funeral sort of gathering which was supposed to be the plan.

Now, within minutes, the once-calm family home transformed into a bustling crime scene. Yellow tape is strung across the front yard. Investigators in white forensic suits step carefully around the blood pools and broken glass, preserving any evidence the intruder may have left.

behind. A detective gently guides Saba outside the home, trying to calm her enough to take an initial statement. Through sobs, Saba describes what she knows, and this interaction gets recorded on one of the police officers' body cam.

now i'm about to show this 2 minute 40 second clip to you but it's a little bit hard to understand because there's this like thick british accent going on there's a lot of commotion a lot of hysteria it's also being recorded on like a police camp so the audio and the video aren't the best quality it's late at night so i'll just set some context here

In this footage, Sabah is talking to two investigators about the story of how she found her sister's body. And the story goes something like this. That evening, Sabah was at home taking care of Saima's four kids with nobody else in the house with her.

Saima was at work, and Saima's husband was attending the family funeral, along with Sabah and Saima's parents. At some point in that evening, Saima's youngest daughter started crying, and Sabah assumed that she needed milk. So she called Saima, asking her to come home. the crying child. When Saima was close to reaching the house, Saba decided to head to the upstairs bathroom for a shower. While she is showering, she drops a text to Saima asking if she is back and Saima says yes. All is good.

But moments later, Sabah hears Saima's screams coming from the floor downstairs. By the time she dresses up, gets out of the shower and heads downstairs, Saima has already been attacked and is lying in a pool of her blood with the attacker long gone.

I rang her, I texted her, I got to her with the girls crying. She goes to me, she's here. When she came here, I shout from the bathroom, I go to her, are you home? She goes, yeah. So then I was fine. But then I heard her shouting suddenly, and when I heard her shouting, I just came out. When I came out, it was just her shouting, you didn't hear anybody else? I didn't hear anybody else.

I heard banging. When I heard banging, when I came down, I thought how long ago was that, roughly? Now, for any officer hearing this account, it's a terrifying thought. In this peaceful, otherwise quiet neighbourhood, an intruder has entered a home full of children and murdered the mother in cold blood. The detectives note Sabah's distress and the details of her story carefully. An intruder, a struggle in the dark, a life taken violently.

And then the rest of the Khan family arrives. Saima and Sabah's parents stumbled into the cordon area, frantically demanding answers. Hafiz Rehman, Saima's husband, pushes past uniformed officers until he stopped at the door. He catches a single glimpse of his wife lying motionless on the floor and screams. It takes several officers to restrain him as he fights to get to her as disbelief and grief contort his face.

The children, confused and scared, cry out for their dad and he's led away to comfort them. Tears in his eyes. Outside, under the flashing lights, the family huddles together, shattered. The parents cling to their grandchildren, trying to soothe them while processing the unthinkable reality that one daughter is dead. And nearby is their other daughter, Sabah. who looks as devastated as anyone, rocking back and forth on the curb, repeating, who would do this? Who would do this to her?

In this first chaotic hour after the murder, no one has answers. Police dispatch dogs to search the surrounding streets for any sign of a fleeing suspect. Detectives canvass the neighbours who recount hearing screams but seeing no stranger. Ambulances and crime scene vans line the streets. What had moments ago been a peaceful suburban night is now a media frenzy in the making. Camera flashes already lighting the streets as news of the gruesome killing begins to spread.

Yet, amid the confusion and grief, Small inconsistencies are brewing in investigators' minds. The brutality of the stabbing stands out. Burglars typically do not savagely stab a victim dozens upon dozens of times. Thieves are usually in a hurry to steal and leave. Adding to that, Saima's purse lay on the side table untouched, jewellery was still in her bedroom, and electronics were all still in place. If it was indeed a burglar, he left empty-handed, which struck the police as odd.

The presence of the children and Sabah and Saima also raised questions. Why would a random intruder choose a house full of people and kids to commit such a brutal act? Typically, burglars avoid confrontation and certainly avoid lingering to stab someone nearly 70 times. Something wasn't adding up. Something about this felt personal, driven by rage.

And why were the house lights switched off and the police arrived? As dawn breaks over Lutton, police investigators are left with a horrifying mystery. A mother is dead, killed in the supposed safety of her own home. The initial appearance is a burglary gone wrong, as Sabah claims, but evidence and inductions say that something deeper might be at play. The truth behind this murder lies buried in family secrets and betrayal that may have been under the surface for years now.

To uncover that truth, the story now steps back from that bloody night, rewinding the clock to understand how these two sisters arrived at that horrible crime scene, but on very different sides of it. Years before that tragic night, the Khan household was a bustling, multi-generational home filled with laughter, traditions and the chaos of everyday life.

Saima Khan was the eldest daughter of a Pakistani-British family, a quiet and caring woman known for her gentle personality. By her early 20s, Saima had married Hafiz Rahman, a taxi driver, and together they started a family. Over the years, four beautiful children were born into the home, three daughters and a son, and Saima devoted herself to being a loving mother.

What made their household unusual to some western eyes was that Saima's extended family all lived together. Under one roof in Lutton lived Saima, her husband Hafeez, their kids and Saima's own parents. Also living with them, was Sabha Khan, Saima's younger sister. But Saima wasn't just a big sister to Sabha. In a way, she was a mentor and a friend, eight years her senior.

They cooked together in that narrow kitchen, celebrated Eid together and birthdays in that living room together and shared responsibilities in the home. And despite what the white Brits around them thought, the Khans loved this arrangement. The living together, the looking out for each other, the evening spent in the company of those one loves the most.

As the years went on, Sabah became like a second mother to Saima's children. While Saima worked as a care worker for an elderly woman in the neighbourhood, Sabah often helped babysit. She rocked the babies to sleep and chased after the toddlers when Saima was busy. Family photographs from those days show Sabah smiling brightly, a toddler niece on her hip, Saima at her side with another child in her arms.

To any outsider, they looked like a close-knit happy family. Two sisters effectively running a home together, caring for the kids and their slowly aging parents. But behind the warm smiles in those photos, unspoken tensions and secrets lurked. As Saba moved through her 20s, living in her elder sister's shadow grew more...

complicated. Unlike Saima, who married young, Sabah was single and still figuring out her path. She watched her older sister build a life, a marriage and a family, all while Sabah remained at home. There had been pressure, spoken or implied, from people around for Sabah to finally settle down. But Sabah's world largely revolved around the domestic sphere she shared with her sister.

Perhaps she felt left behind, envious of the affection and purpose that Saima had in her life. Or perhaps there were other emotions stirring too. You see, inside the household, roles were clearly defined. Saima was the dutiful daughter and mother, soft-spoken and responsible. Hafeez, her husband, was the breadwinner, driving his cab, working late nights. Sabah was the younger, more free-spirited sister who had

not yet married. She helped out at home and took classes part-time at the local college. Some evenings, she would sit with Hafiz in the lounge as he watched TV, casually chatting about their days, while Saima busied herself with the children's bedtime upstairs. It all seemed innocent enough. Yet, if you looked closer at Sabah and Hafiz, you might notice the lingering glances that lasted a moment too long, the laughter that was a touch too friendly.

Maybe the rest of the family missed these subtle signs, or maybe they simply could not imagine anything improper could ever happen in their traditional home. But somewhere along the way, boundaries were crossed in secret. At first, it was small. A late night conversation in the kitchen that stretched on longer than it should have. Hands brushing accidentally. An inside joke that only the two of them shared. Then came the stolen moments when no one else was watching.

Whispers behind closed doors, a text message sent at midnight from one bedroom to another. Then eventually, the thing that could truly shatter their family happened. Sabah and Hafiz's relationship turned physical. The affair began quietly. Perhaps even they would say that it just happened. But it did not stop. While Saima slept upstairs or rocked a baby to bed, her own sister and her husband were meeting in the shadows. They shared kisses and hushed promises when they could steal time alone.

For the outside world, and especially for Saima and the parents, nothing had changed. But within the secret triangle of husband, wife and sister, a sort of game had begun. Every loving interaction at the dinner table became layered with deceit. Sabah setting a plate in front of her brother-in-law with a smile, Hafiz complimenting the meal that both his wife and sister had cooked together.

Each stolen glance between the lovers was a betrayal to the mother of his children sitting right beside them. If Saima ever sensed something amiss, she did not show it then. By all accounts she remained blissfully unaware that her own sister was fighting for her place. Meanwhile, Sabah, the young woman who had grown up under Saima's protective sisterly love, now found herself in love with the one man she should have regarded as a brother. In Sabah's mind, emotions waged war.

guilt and desire, envy and hope. In quiet moments, perhaps she rationalized it. In matters of love, the heart wants what it wants, she might have told herself. And Sawa's heart wanted Hafiz.

Over time, this longing transformed into a full-blown obsession. She wasn't content with secret meetings in dark corners. She dreamed of a different life, one where she wasn't the aunt helping raise the children, but their mother. Not the sister-in-law on the sidelines, but the wife. In that fantasy life, Sabah saw herself by Hafiz's side openly, with her sister out of the house.

As months rolled into years, the affair continued and it was a tricky balancing act. The two had to be cautious. One wrong move and their world would implode. But the more time passed, the less these stolen moments were enough for Sabah. With each day that she saw Hafiz play the role of the loving husband to her sister, her resentment grew.

Sabah began to resent hearing Saima's laughter filling the house when Hafiz told her a joke or seeing the two of them go out together as a couple to weddings or dinners. To Sabah, it felt as if her own happiness was being flaunted in front of her. The life she felt should be hers. being lived by someone else, even if that someone was her own blood. But one person in this triangle was growing increasingly uneasy. Hafiz himself.

Having an affair with his sister-in-law was dangerous and slowly, with time, he realized the risks were getting too high. Perhaps guilt gnawed at him. Perhaps he realized he genuinely loved his wife and his children more than the fleeting romance. Or maybe he was simply terrified of the catastrophic consequences if they were caught. Whatever the reason, after years of duplicity, Hafiz began pulling back.

He started to cool things off with Sabah. He blocked her on WhatsApp occasionally to stop the flood of messages she'd send. He tried to put distance between them inside the house, avoiding being alone together. To Sabah, these changes were devastating. The man she loved was suddenly retreating into the arms of her sister, recommitting to his marriage. Sabha felt her dreams slipping away, replaced by the prospect of losing both her lover and the fantasy future she clung to.

backing off because of annoying guilt i think it is the realization of the logistical nightmare that awaits him and the fact that he has four kids this is not a you know a single kid household that you can still contemplate oh i can leave and abscond with the sister you have a big family, you're clearly from a South Asian community, therefore, probably from a conservative background. I think nothing logistically is aligning. And this too, cheating on his wife was selfish.

And now withdrawing to the wife is also selfish. This is a selfish guy. Absolutely. And I also think just the description of Sabah that I've read over and over again online, it just seems like her obsession grew to such degrees. I can also see why that was a turn off. I can see why, you know.

from the psychology of a cheater like a fling is a fling because it's fun and it's fleeting and it's exciting and it's casual and it's on the sidelines but then there is this sort of obsessive need and perhaps Hafiz's timeline of how quickly the world should find out if at all

world should find out didn't quite match sabah's and then there's this woman who's growing more and more desperate and increasingly more obsessive i can totally see why all of this together just made him go okay this probably isn't it yeah to me this sounds like a guy that's so like one of those, you know, adult videos. And he was like, Oh, I get to live that fantasy except the video ends. But when your life doesn't just end, you need to then go from bedroom to living room to the real world.

Now with all of this happening, Sabah's emotional state became volatile. She begged Hafiz not to abandon her and when pleading didn't work, she resorted to threats. She told him she would harm herself if he ended things. Anything to keep him from fully leaving her home. for Saima. By early 2016, the family dynamic had grown tense and complicated in ways that only two people understood.

To everyone else, including Saima, Sabah perhaps just seemed moody or stressed. The truth remained hidden. A marriage had been ruined by betrayal and the bond between two sisters was turning into something dangerous. set for tragedy, even if the actors themselves did not fully grasp it yet. Sabha's heartbreak and jealousy had made her realise that if she couldn't have his love through kindness, she might achieve it through something else.

In her mind, Saima was no longer the sister she loved, but the one thing standing between her and everything she wanted. And then, in the spring of 2016, everything reached a boiling point behind closed doors. Hafiz Rehman had, by this time, resolved to end the affair with Sabah once and for all and dedicate himself to his wife and children. He and Saima had even discussed moving out of the shared family home.

After years of living with parents and siblings, the couple planned to relocate with their kids to a different house, a fresh start where they could focus on just them. They intended to leave and, by extension, put distance between Hafiz and Sabah. When Sabah found this out, it felt like the ground beneath her gave way. The finality of it, her lover and her sister taking the children and leaving her behind, was too much to bear.

And that's when she began to get more desperate. She began to believe that if Saima were gone from the picture entirely, Hafiz would have no reason to leave her. In this warped logic, she convinced herself that the only solution was a permanent one. Saima had to go. It's a terrifying leap for a person to make, from sibling rivalry and jealousy to murder. And inside Saba's mind, a plan began to form.

She imagined a future where she would console Hafiz after her sister's tragic accident, where she would step in over time as the caregiver for the children left motherless. It was all a fantasy born of envy and heartbreak. But once she began to actually plan. And then Sabah turned to the internet. Late at night, when everyone else slept, she sat alone, typing in search query after search query. She looked up methods of murder, as if shopping for the most foolproof way to kill.

Her search history read like a catalogue of murder. How to hire a killer. 16 steps to kill someone and not get caught. Inquiries into poisonous snakes. Research on lethal substances like rat poison, drug overdoses and even the radioactive element polonium. These searches made it clear, she wasn't just idly fantasizing, she was educating herself on how to commit the perfect crime.

And her plotting didn't stop at mere research. Sabah reached out beyond the physical world and into the realm of superstition and the supernatural for help. In March 2016, she contacted someone she believed wielded, quote, dark powers, a self-proclaimed black magic practitioner in Pakistan.

In secret exchanges via WhatsApp, she pleaded for his service, to have a death curse placed on her sister. It sounds insane, but the digital trail of messages left later revealed how earnestly Saba pursued this. She was willing to try anything. anything, even black magic to get what she wanted. Hell, money even exchanged hands. Saba paid this so-called priest £5,000, a small amount for her to perform rituals that would quote, finish off her sister from afar.

I mean small amount. Small amount for her? 5,000 pounds? Which was her whole world, her whole life, whatever she thought. Alright. This is bad shit. This is... a crazy woman. I mean, you know, there's no denying that she is crazy. And one thing that, you know, stands out to me, we've covered cases, of course, with... uh family side of sorts right where family members kill each other

There is usually brewing tension from both sides when that happens. You know, it's just when the straw breaks is the question. Here, it's so one-sided. I expect that when it... You're completely right. The other sibling rivalry turned murder case that just comes to mind immediately is Ponti Chadda. obviously very different motives very different context but you're right there was tension brewing from both ends and it wasn't completely a shock to either sibling when

something truly tragic ended up happening. This is one completely oblivious sibling living in the same home who has absolutely no idea something's happening at all. Now, in this whole priest black magic situation to create some plausible deniability and hide her intent, Sabah even wrote her messages in third person as if she was talking about a friend, but the meaning was clear.

Yeah. What the hell, Ash? If you Google search, my friend wants to kill someone, how should they go about doing it? Absolutely not. That doesn't absolve you of the crime. In one message she said, quote, My friend is really upset now. Hafiz doesn't even look at her. He says he realizes his mistake. You finish off Saima as quickly as possible so my Sabah can get her Hafiz back. End quote.

All of this shows the depth of her desperation. She was looking about in every direction for a solution. If the dark spell had worked and Saima simply dropped dead from mysterious causes, Saima would have preferred that. But no tragedy came for Saima in the weeks that followed. Each morning, Saba would wake to see her sister alive and well, bustling about with her children, and her resentment only grew sharper.

Realizing, surprise surprise, that no magical intervention was going to hand her what she wanted, Sabha now decided she was going to do what needed to be done herself. and now i recall one desi crime case where a one-sided sibling rivalry was involved and it was the sweet bobby case and it too occurred in london there is something in the air there's something in the air

This was something we were discussing in the Rakesh Mahari episode as well, where Daud Ibrahim's parents were told that he was going to be, Daud was going to be the sibling that's going to do great things. And so he was the one that was put in an English medium school. He was the one that, you know, was treated differently than all his other siblings.

So there you go, self-fulfilling prophecy right there. So now Sabah knew the theory of killing from all of her online research. She just needed the tools and an opportunity. The first tool was obvious, a weapon.

In early May, she quietly purchased a brand new large kitchen knife from a local Tesco supermarket. It had a huge blade, longer and heavier than the kitchen knives that the family already owned. She stashed this knife away in her cupboard keeping it hidden from the rest of the home.

She also acquired a set of black clothes and gloves. If she were to carry out an attack, she wanted to leave no traces behind. Dark clothes to minimize visible bloodstains and gloves to avoid fingerprints or DNA. The second tool she needed was an opportunity. A time and situation where she could get Saima alone and vulnerable, without immediate suspicion falling on herself. And soon, fate presented Saba with exactly the scenario she needed.

On the night of May 23, 2016, a family relative's funeral was scheduled. Saima and Sabah's parents planned to attend, as did Hafeez. The event provided a convenient excuse too. Someone had to stay home to watch the children, especially the youngest, who was only a one-year-old infant. Saba volunteered for that. It was only natural, since she often babysat her nieces and nephew.

Saima, on the other hand, arranged her work schedule so she could come home after her evening shift and join her husband and parents at the post-funeral gathering. Sabha realized this night was her chance. The house would be almost empty except for her and the children. No parents, no brother-in-law, but most importantly, there was a chance that Saima would get late at work as she often did, decide to skip the funeral.

and just return home, tired and alone. It was now or never. In the hours leading up to the murder, the atmosphere in the Khan house was likely tense, but for reasons no one but Sabha understood. You can imagine her pacing the living room after the family had left for the funeral, constantly staring at the clock. Once the children were fed and put to bed early, the household grew quiet.

Perhaps Saba went up to each child's bedroom to ensure they were soundly asleep. She wouldn't want them wandering out at the wrong moment. And then, as 11pm neared, Saba grew uneasy. Saima still wasn't home from work. Instead of waiting, she decided to do something herself and typed out a series of text messages to her sister knowing exactly which buttons to press.

The baby won't stop crying, she wrote with urgency, referring to Saima's one-year-old. She needs you, Appa. Please come home. I don't know what to do. There is no mother on earth who wouldn't drop everything upon hearing her little baby needed her. Just as Saba wanted, the messages hit their mark. At her workplace, Saima read her sister's texts and immediately grew concerned.

It was unusual for Saba to be so alarmed about the baby crying. Saba was normally very capable with the kids. Perhaps anxiety hit Saima. She may have imagined her little one ill or injured. So without second thought, she left work early and hurried home to the kids. In her mind, she was coming to put her baby to rest. But she was going back home to the night she'd never wake up from.

Back at the house, Sabah armed herself. She put on the black outfit, black trousers, a dark hoodie, and pulled on the gloves. She pulled out the hidden kitchen knife, holding it tight. Then she positioned herself, standing just out of sight near the front hallway. and waited. And finally, moments later, through the front window, headlights swept across the driveway. Saima was home. The front door opened and Saima stepped inside, calling out softly for her sister.

Where are you? She probably had no time to register the strange darkness in the house because almost immediately, the moment she entered, the lights went out. Sabah had flipped the switch moments after Saima entered. What transpired next in the Khan home was sheer violence, all in the span of just a few minutes. As the lights went out, Saima lightly froze in confusion at the entrance.

Perhaps she thought it was a power cut or a blown fuse. She called out again, slightly concerned. But before Saima could take another step or reach for a light switch, a figure walked towards her in the dark. In the faint ambient glow from the streetlights outside, Saima could just make out her attacker's outline. A person about her size, dressed in black. But there was no time to scream.

before the first hit came. The knife was in her abdomen with so much force and Saima cried out loud. Suddenly, she was in shock and pain. She had been stabbed by surprise in her own home. Maybe it was then that she recognised the face in front of her, despite the dark. Her sister. Saima fought back. She was unarmed, blindsided, but the instinct to live and protect her children couldn't have been weak.

In that home's narrow hallway, a struggle unfolded. Saima tried to grab the knife and shove Sabah away. The sisters fought, knocking against the walls. Family portraits hanging in the hall crashed to the ground. A table holding a vase of flowers tipped over, shattering glasses. on the floor. Sabah was now more angry than ever. All her years of jealousy, heartbreak and hatred was expressed through the knife she held. She stabbed again and again, each time harder than the last.

Saima's screams echo through the house and up the staircase where the kids slept. These were the screams that the neighbours would later recall with a shudder. They were the sounds that woke Saima's sleeping children in their beds. Upstairs, the children were now scared and confused. The eldest child, alarmed by the commotion and their mother's voice in pain, crept to the top of the house. the staircase. From that upstairs balcony in the dark, the little girl saw it, her mother on the ground.

The little girl even asked, Sabah, are you killing mum? That question, equal parts confusion and horror, momentarily broke through Sabah's anger. Her eyes turned upwards to the landing where she could barely see her niece's small silhouette. But Saba was too far gone in that moment to turn back. Stay upstairs, she said to her niece. Don't come down here. The words were both a threat and some twisted form of protectiveness. She didn't want the child to see any more or to interfere.

Terrified, the girl listened, going back into her room. But nothing could stop her from hearing what came next. The moment the little girl was gone, Sabha simply continued. Saima, now deeply hurt, had collapsed onto her back on the floor. Blood pooled around her, making it slippery. She tried to crawl, moving towards the front door to escape, but she just couldn't. Sabah pinned her down and continued. The knife rose and fell.

rose and fell. Saima's hands were covered in gashes from trying to grab the blade, defensive wounds that spoke to her will to survive. At some point in the chaos, the knife slashed across Saima's right hand, cutting deeply through her palm as she tried to shield. herself. Another slash pierced her side. A stab to the chest, two more to the abdomen. Saima's cry slowly softened as she bled onto the floorboards.

Then came the final blow. Sabah raised the knife high and brought it down onto Saima's neck. The blade cut through, severing Saima's cartoid arteries and juggalo vein in an instant. Saima's body convulsed once as the vital vessels were sliced. And then she went still. Her eyes, open in shock, stared blankly at the ceiling. The fight was over. But Sabah did not stop.

She continued stabbing even after Saima had already died. 68 separate wounds, many of which were inflicted post-mortem. At last, panting and covered with blood, Saba stopped. In the silence that followed, the reality of what she had done loomed over her. The hallway looked like a war zone. Blood was everywhere, on the walls, the floor, her clothes, her hands. Her sister's body lay unrecognizable, eyes fixed upwards.

The smell of iron now hung in the air. Sabah stood over Saima's body, but she couldn't afford to freeze now. She had a cover story to enact. If she was going to get away with this, she needed to transform this crime scene into something else. A burglary gone wrong, just as she had planned.

First, she needed to make it look like an outsider had been in the house. She rushed to the small ground floor outside window in the back of the house and smashed it from outside. The glass shattered inwards, with shards of glass on the ground below. This detail would be crucial. Broken glass inside could trick investigators into thinking someone broke in from outside.

Next, she dealt with the evidence on herself. There was no time for a thorough cleaning, but she could at least hide the obvious. She took off her black, blood-soaked clothes and the gloves. Then she grabbed a couple of large garbage bags into which she stuffed everything. The dripping kitchen. knife, her clothes, the gloves. She tied the bags shut.

Still barefoot and in her undergarments, Saba ran upstairs where she hid the garbage bags in the back of her closet. In her panic, she didn't have a chance to dispose of them outside the house, so she hid them temporarily, maybe thinking she'd deal with it later when the chaos subsided. Now, this entire crime scene has taken me a while to describe to all of you. But amazingly, all of this, the crime scene and the cover-up took just 8 minutes.

At 11.07pm, Saima entered the home. By 11.15pm or so, the murder was over and the house was dark and silent again. At about 11.25pm, a composed enough Sabah dialed her parents' number with trembling fingers. They were still at the funeral when her father answered and Sabah cried into the phone, oscillating between sobbing and hyperventilating as she tried to convey that something horrible had happened. Come home quickly. There's been an attack. Saima, there's blood everywhere. I think she...

she's dead. Her parents, initially confused and horrified, dropped everything and raced out to their car. Next, Sabah called 999, the emergency number, where she faked hysteria and shock as she told them an intruder had murdered her sister in their home.

When she hung up, Sabah took a moment to ground herself. She had to act the part of the devastated, innocent sister now, as she positioned herself just outside the front door, ready to meet the first responders with a convincing show of fear and grief. Which brings us back... back full circle to the scene we began this story with.

In those minutes after committing the crime, Sabah had attempted to make herself another victim of the crime. She believed she had been clever, staging the break-in, hiding the evidence and concocting a story about a mysterious intruder. She likely thought that with Saima gone, she could have eventually step into her sister's life as she had always wanted. But if she thought getting rid of her sister was the end of her problems, she was so far from right. It was only just the beginning.

In the immediate aftermath of the murder, the Khan family and the police struggled to make sense of what appeared to be an inexplicable act of violence. As dawn broke the next day, detectives began their methodical work, combing through the house for evidence.

photographed the blood splattered walls and floor, bagged the pieces of the broken vase and window glass and swapped every surface for DNA and fingerprints. Sabha's initial story of a burglary gone wrong was noted, but investigators weren't entirely convinced. While forensic evidence was being gathered, detectives started interviewing family and neighbours too.

The neighbours reiterated hearing screams around 11.10pm, screams that stopped abruptly after a few minutes. None reported seeing any stranger fleeing the scene. However, one neighbour offered a clue. Their closed-circuit security camera pointed towards the street had captured Saima's arrival and the sequence of events. This is when police found their smoking gun.

This is when they learnt of the timeline of the home's lights turning off. Essentially, when investigators obtained the CCTV footage and reviewed it carefully, they noticed something odd. There was Saima, visible in grainy black and white, walking up to her front door at 11.07pm. The hallway light inside flickered on as she entered and turned it on.

But then, just less than a minute later, at 11.08pm, the lights turned off and never turned back on until police arrived. This timeline made inspectors increasingly suspicious because according to Sabah, She was in the shower when Saima arrived. If she was in the shower and Saima turned the lights on when she entered, then who turned them off just a minute later? Did an intruder enter within 60 seconds of Saima entering the house only to kill her so brutally for seemingly

no reason at all? This is when the detectives began to consider a chilling possibility. Was Sabha not the witness, but the perpetrator? Could this have been an inside job? To probe this angle, they needed more evidence. Quietly, the police arranged to search Saba's personal belongings and room.

Perhaps suspecting nothing yet, Sabah complied when officers randomly showed up hours after the murder and politely asked for her clothes and belongings from the night of the murder, for elimination purposes to rule out her DNA, as she lived in the house as well. And sure enough, during a sweep of the house, an officer making his way through an upstairs bedroom closet found something that didn't belong. Tucked behind some boxes was a plastic garbage bag knotted at the top.

He pulled it out and opened it up, only to immediately notice dark red stains inside. And there was the rest of it, a black hooded outfit soaked in blood, a pair of latex gloves and a large kitchen knife with dried blood on its blade. It was everything the killer wore and used, carefully stashed away within the house. Not something an outside burglar would have done, but exactly what an inside murderer would.

When news of this discovery reached the lead detective, any remaining benefit of doubt evaporated. The evidence pointed squarely at Sabha. Now, the puzzle pieces started clicking together. The staged break-in, the initial misdirection. However, in building a case, the police didn't want to rely on just that discovery alone. They needed to establish motive and premeditation.

So investigators seized Sabha's phone and computer for forensic analysis. What they found there was a goldmine of evidence. Recovery of deleted search histories and WhatsApp messages unveiled the months leading up to the murder.

Extensive internet search history showing queries about killing, methods to murder without being caught, and bizarre attempts like using snakes or poison. The communication with the black magic priest explicitly discussing finishing off Saima so that, quote, Sabah can get her her fees back. and perhaps most explosively, the trove of messages between Sabah and Hafiz, her brother-in-law. Those chats revealed a passionate affair, full of endearments from Sabah and frustrations from Hafiz.

In those texts, Sabah called her sister awful names like that bitch. She professed obsessive love for Hafiz. Quote, nothing in the world can change my feelings for you. Day by day, my love gets stronger, she wrote to him. The context around these messages showed Hafiz trying to cut ties and focus on his wife, which only fuelled Sabah's desperation. Reading these digital conversations, detectives began to fully grasp the motive behind the murder.

The case that emerged was shocking. Sabah had lowered her own sister to her death in order to remove her as a rival for a man's affection. With this mountain of evidence, the police moved swiftly to arrest Sabah as the prime suspect in Saima's murder. Taken into custody, her rights read as she sat in the back of the police car, silent and pale. Perhaps in that moment, Sabah realised the game was up. But if she felt remorse or fear, she tried not to show it.

In the interrogation room at the station, detectives confronted Saba with what they had found. This was the dramatic turning point, the police interview that would either result in her confession or further denial. The room was small and windowless, a single table between Sabah and two investigators. The fluorescent lights were unkind, highlighting the dried blood still faintly visible at the cuticles of Sabah's nails, stains she didn't fully manage to wash away.

They started with open-ended questions. Tell us again what happened that night, a detective asked softly as another clicked on a recording device. Sabha repeated her story, the same one she had told multiple times by now. The detectives let her talk, noting every inconsistency.

Then they began to dismantle her narrative piece by piece. One slid photographs across the table, images of the bag found in her room. Her eyes widened at the sight of the evidence. She opened her mouth, but no words came out. For a moment, she seemed genuinely at a loss. Then she stammered that she didn't know how those items got there, as improbable as that sounded. Perhaps she suggested the intruder planted them there to frame her, a desperate lie.

Next, they showed her transcripts of her own internet searches. Terms like 16 steps to kill someone and poisonous snakes jumped off the page. Sabha's face drained of colour. Those were just random, she mumbled. Just curiosity, not serious. The detectives exchanged sceptical glances. They pressed on, now revealing knowledge of the affair. When did your relationship with Hafiz begin, one asked abruptly.

Sabah's head snapped up. Relationship? He's my brother-in-law, she tried to insist, deflecting. But confronted with excerpts from her WhatsApp chats, her own loving pleas to Hafiz, she could no longer deny it. Her shoulders slumped. The secret was out. Still, through all of these blows to her facade, Sabha refused to confess. When cornered with the overwhelming evidence, a survival instinct kicked in. She went silent.

After her initial weak denials failed, Sabah simply lowered her eyes and said, no comment to every further question. For hours, they tried to break through her wall of silence. They described the crime scene, the brutality, asking why she would do such a thing. No comment, she said every single time. In her mind, perhaps she clung to the slim hope that without a confession, some shred of doubt might save her. But in truth, the evidence spoke louder than any confession could.

When the interview concluded, Sabah was charged with the murder of her sister Saima Khan. The police led her to a holding cell as she stared at the floor, wrists scuffed. It's likely that in that moment she understood the full magnitude of what she had done. Not only had she killed her sister, but she had destroyed her own life in the process.

For the Khan family, these revelations were almost too much to bear. Saima's parents, who had already lost one daughter to violence, now had to grapple with the reality that their other daughter was the perpetrator. It was a double tragedy. One child murdered, the other. a murderer. They sat through police briefings stunned, shaking their heads in disbelief.

The notion that Sabah could harbour such hatred towards Saima was unimaginable to them. How had they missed the warning signs? The guilt and grief weighed heavy on them. And what about Hafiz Rehman, the man at the centre of this love triangle?

He cooperated fully with the investigators, handing over his phone and giving statements about the affair. Hafiz admitted to his shame that he had been intimate with Sabah and that he had tried to end it. He likely blamed himself for sowing the seeds of this tragedy. if he had never betrayed his wife, Saima might still be alive. In a statement to the press later, a devastated Hafiz said, I have lost my world and I cry every day.

My wife Saima was a lovely, caring, kind woman and mother. Sabah's actions have left our four children without a mum. There is not a day that goes by when I don't regret my affair with Sabah. Hafiz's remorse was profound. He had to live with the knowledge that his own weakness and infidelity played a part in triggering Saba's jealousy. Now he faced raising his children alone under the cloud of this family betrayal.

In one cruel night, he lost his wife and effectively his sister-in-law too. The woman he had lusted after now transformed into the object of his hatred and disgust. As the investigation wrapped up, the case against Sabah Khan was rock solid. The Crown Prosecution Service prepared to take her to trial for murder, confident that a jury would easily convict given the trove of evidence and the shocking motive laid bare.

The story had already hit the media. Tabloids label Saba quote, the sister from hell, and the case became infamous as an example of how far unrequited love and jealousy could drive someone. In October 2017, nearly a year and a half after Saima's murder, Sabha Khan stood in the dock of London's Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey, to face justice. She was a shadow of the woman who once smiled in family photos. Dressed in a modest outfit,

fit, her hair covered with a scarf, Saba looked down and pale under the courtroom lights. At the last minute, in a brief hearing before her trial was to commence, Saba's lawyer announced that she would plead guilty to the charge of murder.

It was an abrupt but not entirely unexpected development. Given the mountain of evidence, contesting the charges risked a longer sentence. By pleading guilty, Sabah perhaps hoped for a modicum of leniency, or at least to spare her family the ordeal of a full trial with all of

the sordid details publicly aired again. The courtroom on sentencing day was sombre and filled with suppressed emotion. Members of Saima's family sat in the gallery, clutching tissues as the prosecutor recounted the harrowing timeline of Sabah's crime for the judge. Even though Sabah had pled guilty, the Crown still laid out the facts to ensure the record was clear about the brutality and premeditation involved. The judge, Justice Christopher Moss QC, listened intently.

When he heard how one blow severed Saima's neck vessels and how Sabah continued stabbing even after death, he shook his head in disbelief. The Defence Council, in mitigation, tried to salvage what they could of Sabah's situation. They painted her as a woman whose emotional turmoil and lower maturity had led her to this desperate act. They pointed out that Sabah was younger than Hafiz by 10 years, possibly suggesting she was manipulated or led on by an older man.

They revealed intimate details that in 2012, Sabah had even become pregnant by Hafiz and later had an abortion, an experience which likely scarred her emotionally. They argued that Hafiz had taken advantage of her youth and feelings, stringing her along in an illicit relationship and then discarding her. The defence stopped short of justifying the crime, but they sought to provide context that this was not a cold-hearted killer in the usual sense.

but a broken young woman driven to an against nature act by extreme emotional distress. However, as the prosecution countered, many people suffer heartbreak and rejection without resorting to violence, let alone the slaughter of their own sibling.

The Crown Prosecutor emphasised how calculated Sabah had been, the researching methods, consulting a black magic hitman, buying a knife in advance and choosing a knight when the odds were in her favour. This was premeditation, first-degree murder by any measure. As part of sentencing, statements from the family were presented as well. The most heartbreaking came from Hafiz himself, delivered in writing since he chose not to appear in person.

In it, he expressed the shame of his affair and the immeasurable loss of his wife. I have lost my wife and my world. Every day I am filled with regret for what happened, he said. Hafiz also had words for Sabah's actions, saying he never imagined she could do something so horrific and that her crime was beyond forgiveness. When the time came for the judge to pass sentence, the courtroom fell silent. Justice Moss spoke gravely, addressing Sabah.

He called the killing, quote, a vicious and sustained attack and noted how it was particularly heinous because it violated the most basic bond of trust, that between sisters. But the judge firmly rejected any notion that this was an honour killing or any culturally motivated act, a narrative that had started to circulate in the media. He acknowledged the defence's points about Sabah's youth and intelligence level being on the lower side of average.

did not mitigate the fact that she knew exactly what she was doing. Quote, Sabah wanted her sister's life. She wanted her children and her husband. Hearing that they were planning to leave was the final straw. And she took her sister's life in bitter envy, Justice Moss stated. His voice stern. For the charge of murder, there is only one mandatory sentence in England, life imprisonment. The question was what minimum term Sabha would have to serve before being eligible for parole.

Taking into account the planning, the extreme violence but also her guilty plea, the judge set the minimum term at 22 years in prison. That meant Sabah Khan, 27 at the time of sentencing, would be nearly 50 by the time she would even be considered for release. And even then, release was not guaranteed, but subject to a parole board assessing her risk.

As the sentence was announced, the Khan family sobbed. It was a sound of sorrow and perhaps a small measure of relief. Justice, as best as the law could provide, was served. Sabah herself finally broke down in tears in the dock. Throughout much of the hearing, she had remained stone-faced or downcast, but now, confronted with the reality of spending the next two decades behind bars, she wept.

I'm sure people wondered if those tears were for her sister or purely for herself. In the aftermath of it all, the Khan family had to find a way to continue. Saima's four children, Anne Hafiz, had to navigate single parenthood under a cloud of scandal.

The community in Lutton would not forget what transpired. Hafiz moved to the family house on Overstone Road. It had nothing but terrible memories now. Sabah Khan was sent off to prison to serve her life term where she still is today. In the eyes of society and the law, she got what she deserved for her unspeakable act. But in the eyes of her parents, what did they see? They had to live with the paradox that one daughter was the victim of another.

Visiting Sabah in prison must have been an emotionally complex experience. She's their child, but she killed their other child. Many parents would feel anger, even hatred towards the murderer of their son or daughter. But what if the murderer is also your daughter? Did they disown Sabha or did their love persist despite it all? Those are questions only the Khan parents can answer, likely in the privacy of their own hearts.

This case, known as the Saima Khan murder, stands as a terrifying example of familial betrayal. It has all of the elements of a dark tale, forbidden love, envy and murder. But strip away the sensationalism and at its core, this is a story of profound human tragedy. A story of a life taken by someone who was meant to protect it.

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