Original subtitles

I'm David Wilson, emeritus professor of criminology.

And for over 30 years, I've investigated

the phenomenon of murder and what it is that might

motivate someone to kill.

Every murder case is different.

But time and again, a deadly pattern emerges

of warning signs and red flags.

In this new series, I investigate some of the UK's most

harrowing murder cases to understand how and why

these terrible crimes occur.

This is "Murder UK."

(music playing)

Nawajid and Faria Khan were married in a family arrangement in Pakistan

in 1999.

Faria had spent her life until then living

the typical teenage life of a girl from Sheffield, South Yorkshire.

(Emma Kenny) At 19, to have a marriage arranged for you,

and then to travel over to Pakistan to meet

your husband for the first time on your wedding day,

that's a huge culture shock.

(Tony Kent) Well, this girl from South Yorkshire

was taken from one environment, one culture,

and put into a completely different culture, and one which,

unlike the United Kingdom, is not overly accepting of people

who deviate from that culture.

The odds are really against her.

This is a girl who has grown up in the UK.

She's seen the way that people have choices.

The idea of being put in a position without power,

that's automatically going to cause her deep distress.

(David Wilson) Her husband, Nawajid,

would have experienced his own difficulties

with the sudden culture clash too.

This was a very quiet guy.

She was very westernised.

And they clearly must have clashed because she was

totally different to his culture.

And his culture was totally different to her culture, really.

(David) Just months after the wedding, in the year 2000,

the couple relocated to England.

(Steve Whittaker) He came over from a rural part of Pakistan.

And he was sort of thrust into this Western world,

really, with a really westernised wife.

And I think the two just clearly never got on from day one.

(David) We often focus on the emotional and social

difficulties that people moving from very open cultures

to closed cultures, the kind of trauma that might cause.

But we don't so often think about the other direction, the trauma

faced by people who are moving from very conservative cultures

to ones which are really open.

And the difficulties for him must have been extreme.

He would lose a great deal of his self-identity,

especially in relation to performance of masculinity,

the traditional role of family, and how a man might play that role

within Pakistani culture.

The cultural differences manifested in practical ways.

Although Faria had been willing to wear the burqa in Pakistan,

on returning to Sheffield, she now refused.

She wanted more of a Western lifestyle.

She didn't want to be caught in the usual constraints

of a traditional marriage.

She didn't want to wear a burqa.

She wanted a bit more freedom.

(David) Nawajid was likely surprised by his wife's

cultural tastes, which included a liking for the little-known rap

group Dem Boyz.

(music playing)

This cultural difference seemed to be a source of tension.

Faria objected to Nawajid's behaviour,

claiming he demanded she conform to his traditional values

even though they lived in England.

(music playing)

We are told by her that he became extremely

Islamically fundamental,

in the sense that she had to wear a burqa.

She could not mix with her own family.

She had to obey what her husband said.

(Nazir Afzal) Most, the vast majority, of Muslim women

would wear a hijab, which means covering your hair.

And a lot, many, many thousands now, would not wear either.

So it's a very diverse faith.

And people wear what they want to wear.

There's no strict rule anymore.

People do what they feel comfortable.

(David) But was the claim that Nawajid ordered her to wear

full Islamic dress entirely true?

We have to say that there's a possibility that that's right.

What would be wrong would be to just accept that on face value.

I don't think Khan was the innocent

that she would have us believe.

It may well be that we could call her

an unreliable narrator, can't we?

(David) Eventually, a jury would

be tasked with distinguishing truth from fiction in the life

Faria Khan claimed to have led and the true nature of her relationship

with Nawajid.

She always maintained she was controlled by a traditionalist

Muslim, yet investigators failed to recognise

that description of Nawajid.

(music playing)

(Steve) Everybody we spoke to, probably from where they

worked or anybody that really knew him,

he didn't really know many people, was a bit of a quiet guy, really.

He came over from a rural part of Pakistan.

And he was sort of thrust into this Western world,

really, with a really westernised wife.

And I think the two just clearly never got on from day one.

This was a very quiet guy.

She was very westernised.

And they clearly must have clashed, because she was totally

different to his culture, and his culture was totally

different to her culture, really.

(David) Faria claimed Nawajid used violence

to enforce his strict views.

Faria tells people that she's beaten by Nawajid.

And she's beaten from the early days.

(David) While investigating detectives

found no evidence that she had been physically assaulted, they did

hear consistent accounts of Faria's unhappiness.

Did they have an ideal relationship?

Possibly not, no.

The cynic in me thinks, did she make things up to make it worse?

I think she did.

(David) The couple settled in Darnall,

on the south side of Sheffield.

Nawajid found work as a chef at the Mangla Restaurant on Spittal Hill.

He was working every hour that there was available...

that work was available.

He came across as...

I think everybody he spoke to said he was a nice guy.

He was a guy that worked in a restaurant

to try and make ends meet.

He was a worker.

And I think all around, nice chap, really.

(David) I was very interested in the fact

that Nawajid was a chef and he took

all the hours in the restaurant

that was given to him.

And that's, of course, him painting a very traditional

picture of the performance of masculinity

within a conservative culture.

He is a provider for his family.

It's also interesting to note that his work colleagues described

him as a nice bloke, a good guy.

But one does get the sense that working all the hours that he could

told us something about the stresses

that he must have been in at home.

A domestic setting was not a place where he found any comfort.

Work seemed to provide that role for him.

(music playing)

The next few years brought two children and a job change

for Nawajid, who began working at Marwan's Takeaway.

However, behind closed doors, the underlying tension and conflict

persisted.

What Faria tells us is that as well as doing that,

he became a monster.

And effectively, she claims that he was

making her live a Pakistani life in South Yorkshire.

(David) By 2007, the clash of cultures

had forced their marriage to a crisis point.

She was very westernised, into rap bands.

And she'd got different friends who, again, were

all westernised people her age.

When you add cultural stereotypes and societal stereotypes of what

women should be in these roles, that creates

a really unhealthy relationship.

(Jane Monckton-Smith) Khan says of her marriage

that Nawajid

was quite violent,

controlling, abusive.

And it's more than possible that she

was telling the truth about that.

(David) Not everyone accepted

Faria's portrayal of the marriage, including Sheffield

detective Steve Whittaker.

(Steve) Actually, Nawajid was coming to work complaining

of being assaulted by her.

He was coming to work with injuries. He was coming to work

with black eyes. He was coming to work with scratches on his face.

And he was saying it was her that was attacking him.

It was her that was the abuser.

And it was her that was causing problems.

(David) Faria Khan had painted a picture

of a violent, abusive husband.

Yet investigators found no evidence to support her claims.

(Steve) I would describe her as not a nice person, really.

The interviews that we had with her throughout the court process,

she wasn't a nice individual,

a bit of a manipulative person, really.

That was my thought throughout, really.

This was a kind, nice guy.

This was a really nice guy who, unfortunately, married the devil.

(David Wilson) In 2007, Faria Khan was confiding in friends that she

was a victim of coercive control, which

included being forced to wear clothing

she felt was alien to her identity.

She further claimed she was being subjected

to violence at Nawajid's hands.

(Jane) It obviously got to the stage

where she was very unhappy and may have

been being assaulted, because she went and got

a restraining order against him.

And it was awarded.

She was given a restraining order.

It's really difficult for us to speculate

what exactly was going on in this marriage

in terms of domestic abuse.

(David) While specific facts were elusive, a court

did rule in Faria's favour.

(Steve) I think she'd got a fraught relationship

with Nawajid, and that could have manifested itself

into a non-molestation order.

I accept that.

(David) Non-molestation orders, restraining orders,

are important court documents, legal documents

which, on the balance of probabilities,

says that we believe this person as opposed to that person.

And I think for Faria, it must have given her some sense

that she is being believed.

And by being believed, it would have encouraged her

and propelled her further along the course of action

that she chose to take, because she would

be seen legally as the victim.

And she would have been seen socially,

within the culture in which she was living, as the victim.

As a result of the court order, Nawajid was forced

to move out of the family home.

Nawajid and Khan are both complex characters.

I think it was a bad pairing.

They didn't get on together.

Perhaps he was violent.

She certainly got that restraining order against him.

But I don't think it was a case of, one's really good

and one's really bad.

This is a complex situation.

(David) Faria even claimed Nawajid

intended to burn down their house.

However, investigators later found no evidence

of the physical or verbal abuse she had alleged.

She lied that much, you didn't really know what

was the truth and what wasn't.

(David) Regardless of the truth,

nine years into the marriage, Faria wanted out.

By 2008, Faria has decided that this marriage has to end.

(David) In January that year, Faria filed for divorce.

But a legal separation alone was seemingly insufficient for her.

Less than two weeks after filing for divorce,

Faria confided in a teenage friend.

(Jane) She'd met a girl called Kauser, Neelam Kauser.

She was a bit of a nobody who fancied herself as somebody

with her gangster friends.

And Khan was a friend of hers.

And she's becoming more and more desperate.

And she ends up speaking to a friend of hers

and tells her that the domestic abuse has been happening,

that she's scared, and the fact that she

can't help but wish that he wasn't in her life anymore.

This conversation grew and quite quickly became

quite dangerous.

Khan starts to plan

that she's going to kill Nawajid.

And she's going to kill with the help

of this friend and her friends.

(David) Kauser soon introduced

Faria to her boyfriend, Brian Yorachi,

a member of the local rap group.

(Steve) And these all thought they was something

they really weren't, really.

These were people who went out partying and drinking.

And they met a band called Dem Boyz.

This group of young men seemed to live

in a bit of a fantasy land.

They were quite popular at the time,

on YouTube and on Myspace and those things,

but they never achieved any real notoriety outside of this case.

There's a big difference between the American gang culture

and the British rap gang culture.

Acting as if they were something from Los Angeles, and Compton,

and all that sort of business,

when in fact, they're from Rotheram.

American gang culture has firearms, and access to firearms,

and is well-known for using firearms regularly and for hurting

and harming people.

British gang culture is not the same thing.

(David) When you begin to analyse groups like Dem Boyz,

you begin to see this fantasy persona

that they're trying to make real.

These are not organised criminals.

These are not hardened gangsters.

But they've adopted the persona of being

a gangster from things they've watched in the media, listened

to in music.

And of course, Faria offering them money to take a hit out

on her husband gives them an opportunity to live their image,

to live the idea of who they would like to be.

Despite the Dem Boyz' delusions of violent grandeur,

Neelam Kauser, Faria Khan's new friend,

suggested the rappers could help.

(Jane) When Khan and her friend get together

and they start talking about what ostensibly was probably

about freeing Khan from this terrible situation

that she was in with Nawajid, it escalated a bit too quickly.

She clearly found friendship amongst this group

of men, who were themselves somewhat

deluded in thinking that they were more

violent than they actually were.

(Jane) Khan might have exaggerated her living

conditions, the way her marriage was,

and the things that were going on to gain

that sympathy and that buy-in.

She clearly built a strong enough relationship with these men

to be able to, in her view, trust them.

(David) Faria offered to pay them for the services

she required, to kill Nawajid.

A ridiculously small sum of money.

I mean, I've dealt with hitmen who've been paid tens of thousands

of pounds to carry out the act.

These guys were happy to do it for 200 quid.

(David) It's interesting that they were only

offered 200 pounds.

Now, that's an incredibly small amount of money

to take another person's life.

And if you think about it, it's not 200 pounds that each of them

was going to be given.

It would be 50 pounds each.

So the money is irrelevant.

The money is secondary to the fact that they

can appear to live the life that they want to live,

which is of being a gangster.

But why wouldn't Faria Khan simply wait

for the divorce to be finalised?

The question has to be asked, doesn't it?

Why would somebody go to those extremes?

Why would she not just leave him?

(Faeeza Vaid) Yes, there's stigma in communities

and in society around divorce.

However, an Islamic marriage allows you

to get divorced from your husband, as does the UK law.

And so divorce was certainly an option for her,

which would have given her that final separation

from her former partner.

(David) But Faria clearly wanted more than just separation.

Faria arranged to have their home transferred

into her brother's name.

Under Islamic law, it's not cut and dry

that a widow inherits everything that her late husband

leaves to her.

However, if the property is transferred

into another man's name

and then that man is to transfer it back

after the death of the husband, well, of course,

then she will get it all.

She clearly felt that she needed or deserved more than she

would get if she was divorced.

And so it was the money issue that drove her.

(David) All homicides are motivated in some way.

And I think what we see here are instrumental motivations

as opposed to psychological ones.

Instrumental in this case simply means that Faria

wants to be free of her husband.

She wants to inherit any money that would come

as a consequence of his death.

For her, murder is simply a transaction.

It's not an emotional release.

It doesn't have any psychological undertow.

Although I think, ultimately, we know little about her upbringing

and background to really understand who she was as a person,

as to why this kind of transactional arrangement to kill

would have emerged in her.

But here, we've got, classically, a transactional homicide, which

is done for instrumental reasons.

Next, Faria went to great lengths to conceal

her identity as she acquired the intended murder weapon, a car.

(Steve) The car they used was a white Frontera

that had been actually purchased.

It had been bought a few days before by Khan and her sister.

And they bought it in a false name with cash.

Why would you buy a car like this?

This is not a car that you'd buy to pop to the local shops in.

This was a big car when, with all due respect,

she was quite a small lady.

That vehicle was bought for one purpose.

It was bought with the intention to kill her husband.

(David) With a 4x4 big enough to accommodate the entire

group, Faria took Dem Boyz on a reconnaissance trip

to rehearse her husband's murder.

(Steve) Their intention was, at some stage,

to drag him off the street with the help of the Dem Boyz,

the band and they were going to kill him, strangle him,

suffocate him, stab him.

It was Sunday 27th of January, just after 5:00 PM.

And Nawajid Khan was walking to work with a colleague.

A local football match meant the streets

were uncharacteristically crowded for a cold winter's evening.

It's just getting dark.

And he's walking to work to open up the restaurant,

what he did most evenings.

(music playing)

It was extra specially busy because on that day,

Sheffield United were playing Manchester City

in an FA Cup fifth round match that

was being broadcast live on TV.

So it was really, really busy with football fans, two big clubs,

30,000 fans, stadium full.

(David) Then suddenly and violently, the gang struck.

He is set upon by two members of the rap group.

Rappers really felt like they were being heroes,

rescuing Khan from this terrible situation.

And I think that's what got them involved.

They're armed with bats and an axe.

They attack him. And he fights back.

He's no shrinking violet. He's not just a victim.

He fights back. So does his friend.

(David) As the two colleagues

defended themselves against the horrific attack,

a white Vauxhall Frontera pulled up.

Out jumped two more members of the rap group.

At this stage, it's four on two.

And the four men are armed.

(David) As well as bats and axes,

the rappers were armed with hammers and knives

to attack Faria Khan's husband.

This is a really brutal, gruesome attack.

Nawajid tries his best to defend himself, but he's beaten.

And he is forced into the road.

(David) Bloodied and beaten, Nawajid Khan faced a final horror.

He looked up to see the driver of the large vehicle, his wife and

the mother of his two children.

Little did he know that that was going to be the last movements he

would ever make.

(David Wilson) Despite the brutal attack by four young men,

Nawajid managed to break free,

a job ordered by Faria Khan.

(Steve) She was director of operations.

And she took it on herself, actually, I've messed up.

I've employed... I've employed the worst killers in the world.

You pay your money you take your choice at 50 pound each.

(Nazir) They hurt him, but didn't kill him.

And she decided to finish the job.

They either lost their bottle at the end, or they realised,

actually, we're in too deep here.

(David) The white 4x4 suddenly reappeared at high speed.

One witness said she heard a revving engine

that she'd never heard before.

Again, that sort of makes you shiver down your spine.

This car had really revved and really, really

driven at him at some speed.

She watches her husband fall into the road in front of her.

As he's getting to his feet, she runs him down.

(David) Witnesses described how the 4x4 mounted the pavement

before mowing Nawajid down.

Crucially, the major football match that night

proved invaluable to detectives.

(tyres squeal)

(Steve) To do it in front of quite a lot of fans who

were decent people, who were driving... who were driving,

or passengers in cars going to football, or walking by,

who were more than happy to assist the police

and assist the investigation.

And if I remember, I think 30, 40 witnesses came forward.

She revved the car.

And the car seemed to go up like that, where

it goes up in the air and lands.

She then stops the car, puts it in reverse,

and reverses over her husband.

As she does so, she's described as being a woman possessed.

And she's described even worse as chuckling, laughing

to herself as she reverses.

(David) Nawajid Khan was crushed to death

beneath the wheels of the vehicle.

(Steve) This had mounted a pavement.

And it had gone quite fast and hit Nawajid.

And Nawajid was killed, unfortunately, not instantly,

but he was eventually killed by the front wheels of the car

actually on top of him.

(David) This is not an accident.

This is something that she has clearly been planning

and is looking forward to finishing the job.

And of course, it makes a mockery of her previous claims

that she had been the victim.

And I think in this action, there are also elements of overkill.

She's making sure the job is done.

She's using more violence than is actually necessary

to ensure her husband's death.

She's actually trying to annihilate him, to completely obliterate him,

which I think reveals the depths of her dislike of this relationship.

An arranged marriage, which began with the high hopes

of two families, ended with a brutal, violent death.

Later, investigations suggested Nawajid had been a victim

throughout their relationship.

I think men are more afraid of coming forward when they are

the victims of abuse, because there is

a stereotype that this is only something that happens to women.

Unfortunately, that's not the reality.

Men can also be victims of abuse, and in this case, sadly,

victims of murder.

(David) We have to accept that many victims of domestic abuse

will simply never report what's happening to them.

And when we look at men who are the victims of domestic abuse,

there are even further pressures on them not to reveal

what's happening inside their home, partly

because it's about the performance of masculinity.

There's a fear that a man can't have been

the victim of a woman's violence.

And also, there's a sense in which the man will fear

that he won't even be believed.

And therefore, for all those different reasons,

I don't think Nawajid would have been

very comfortable about reporting what was happening to him.

The driver, described by witnesses as a short Muslim woman,

immediately fled into the crowd.

(Steve) What we caught on CCTV

was people running away from the scene.

And we got some grainy footage from a store that was open.

We got, somebody fitting the description of Faria Khan

seemed to be running away.

I think to cover her tracks, she got a taxi away from the scene,

then went shopping to the big shopping complex

called Meadowhall near to Sheffield.

She thought that the police would probably

think this was just a street fight that her husband had

got involved in.

(David) In fact, the police immediately

discounted the notion of a random street

fight or a tragic road accident.

This wasn't somebody crossing the road

and just unfortunately being knocked over.

This was sinister, to say the least.

(David) Within hours, a major crime investigation

was underway.

I got a phone call on a Sunday evening

to tell me that I'd be going to work on a Monday.

I was a detective sergeant at the time on the major investigation

team within South Yorkshire.

And they said that there had been a road traffic accident.

Initially, it was reported as a road traffic accident,

but it looked more sinister than that.

(David) Despite Faria's attempts to disguise the purchase

of the 4x4, detectives quickly traced

the two women who'd bought it.

We actually found out it was them.

We found out it was their phones they used.

And they got picked out on what we call on an identification parade

by the owner of that car.

Inevitably, given the inept way this was carried out,

Faria Khan was arrested very quickly.

(David) The police needed to establish proof

that Faria was the person driving the car when it struck her husband.

(Steve) We had to prove quite a lot.

We had quite a few officers, I think probably at that time,

probably 20 or so officers.

(David) Detectives learned of the successful restraining order

against her husband, her complaints of violence,

and the forced conformity.

The apparent murder of Nawajid Khan was proving

to be far from a simple case.

Under initial interrogation, Faria was calm and reserved.

She no commented to us throughout all the interviews.

And then suddenly, at the end, started to speak.

She proceeded to tell the police a tissue of lies.

So the overwhelming evidence that we've built up

over a few days against her, she'd only got one way out, really,

which was, I'm a victim here.

I'm a victim of domestic abuse.

Yeah, I spoke to people.

Yeah, I don't like him. Yes, I wanted him dead.

But that was just talk.

And I wasn't even there.

(Tony) She denied being there.

She claimed that, in fact, a member of the rap crew

was driving the car. How she could know that, one wonders.

It wasn't till we got to trial later on, she

did change her defence further.

(David) Unfortunately for Faria Khan,

she wasn't the only person detectives were questioning.

And among the interviewees was the original go-between,

the teenage friend who introduced Faria to the gang.

Neelam Kauser was...

she was quite forthcoming, but she had to be forthcoming.

This was a girl, she was 17 years of age, never been

in trouble with the police before.

And she told us who was in the car.

A little naivete on her part.

She told her who was in the car.

She told us what people were doing in that car.

So they were charged quite quickly.

When presented with the overwhelming amount of evidence

and evidence of co-accused, she had no option but to change

her tune at court, really.

(Jane) Khan claimed to everyone

that she was the victim of some awful, terrible control,

violence, and abuse.

Whether that's true or not, well, that's questionable, isn't it?

Because we only have her word for it.

She played the victim card.

And I was convinced as I can be, as an officer of 32 years,

that no, she wasn't a victim.

The only victim in this, unfortunately, is Nawajid.

She may have been subjected to domestic violence

and coercive control.

But she went further than merely trying to protect herself.

(David) Though he initially sympathised with Faria's tales

of domestic abuse, Neelam Kauser's boyfriend, Brian Yorachi,

delivered a devastating blow at the trial.

He stated unequivocally that Faria Khan had been

driving when the car hit Nawajid.

(Steve) He was quite clear that it was Faria Khan who

was driving the car at the time.

She was the one who drove over her husband.

It wasn't the rap band.

Did they realise, flippin' heck, we're making a big mistake here?

I still don't know that, really, to be fair.

And she was the one who, like, leave it with me, boys.

And I'll do this.

(David) There's a defence that partners can use when one has

killed the other, the so-called slow burn mitigation, which reduces

a murder charge to manslaughter.

If one of the partners has suffered from years of abuse

and suddenly snaps, they can argue a sort of self-defence.

This applies mainly to domestic abuse.

So a victim who's absolutely terrified of their attacker

and dare not try and defend themselves at the time

can have this slow burn, where they get more and more and more

frightened and feel they've got to do something about it

to protect themselves.

(David) With the defence of self-protection on the table,

detectives still face the challenge of proving

Faria Khan was guilty of murder.

For this guy to receive the injuries he got,

the way that Nawajid died, was quite clearly... it was a murder.

But would a jury agree on who the leading mind behind the murder was?

Had a wife truly killed her husband?

(David Wilson) At the heart of the prosecution's case against Faria

Khan was premeditation.

While English law offers the slow burn defence for an abuse victim

who retaliates, that defence is immediately

undermined by any evidence of deliberate, long-term planning.

(Steve) This wasn't a spur of the moment,

I don't like me husband, I just think I'm just going to knock him

over and cause him some injuries.

They've planned this for a long, long time, and prior to this.

(David) Faria had collected the weapons for the murder,

providing clear evidence of premeditation.

They bought the axes from a B&Q store,

again, a couple of days before.

They bought the petrol can a couple of days before

from the same store.

But they bought these big two brand-new orange axes, which,

again, very sinister for me.

Their intention was to drag him, get him into the car,

get him away, chop him up, and set him on fire.

What blew this investigation wide open for us was a mobile phone

that was found in the car.

(David) The phone belonged to the go-between, Neelam Kauser.

(Steve) It took us to all the text messages,

took us to who she'd been contacting,

including the band, Dem Boyz.

That was a golden nugget.

It caused their downfall, really.

We found some quite incriminating text messages where they'd been

to his house and saying... sent a text message that said "he's just

put something in the bin outside."

So he's having his house watched.

Again, which makes it more sinister.

There are also messages between members of the group,

or a member of the group, and Faria's friend,

in which Faria's friend is telling them, come on,

you've got to charge at least 200.

You've got to charge at least 200.

This is a man's life.

(Steve) If it wasn't so tragic, it'd be laughable.

To pay somebody 250 or 200 pound to kill

somebody else is beyond tragic, isn't it, really?

(David) The finding of the mobile phone

is quite clearly a major breakthrough in the case,

and I think reveals the kind of criminal incompetence of both Faria

and Dem Boyz, because it reveals that they're not

criminal masterminds or organised criminals in the way

that organised criminals would normally behave,

because harvesting the information from the mobile phone

reveals all the planning that had taken place.

So often, the public thinks of forensics

as simply being about DNA.

But there are other kinds of forensic evidence

that can be harvested by the police during an investigation.

And increasingly, digital forensics would be one of those tools

in an investigation's toolkit.

From inside the 4x4, police uncovered

yet more damning evidence.

In the Frontera was a bandana, which presumably

comes from one of the rap crew.

Also in the Frontera was a knife.

But we found the knife in the car.

Let's go back to where she lives and see if there's

any knives that match that knife.

(David) The subsequent search of Faria's home would prove

conclusive.

There's a knife block on the side.

And the knife block contained five knives.

But there's a hole for the sixth knife.

And this was the same knife that we found in the car.

So again, this was fantastic evidence for us,

really good evidence for us, and quite damning evidence for Khan.

(David) Finally, as Steve Whittaker

revealed to the court, the 4x4 yielded

the most horrific evidence of all.

(Steve) In the boot of the Vauxhall Frontera

was two leather axe head covers.

We initially wondered what these were.

And these axe head covers, it transpired,

belong to two axes that were bought in a pack,

two axes with orange

handles that were bought from a B&Q store.

They weren't buying axes to chop some wood up.

They weren't buying axes to chop a Christmas tree down.

They were buying these axes to use

in the killing of Khan's husband.

We believe, and I believed,

that they were going to grab Nawajid,

they were going to get him to the car.

And he was going to meet his end,

he was going to meet the end by being chopped up with axes

and then set on fire.

(David) What we've really got here

is a kind of shopping list of intent...

the axes, the petrol can, the purchase of a specialised car...

all of which are going to be used within the hit on Nawajid himself.

And of course, that kind of shopping list is

a prima facie case against the idea that

there can be a slow burn defence.

The shopping list reveals the premeditation that went into what's

going to happen to Nawajid.

Despite the overwhelming weight of police evidence,

it was Faria's testimony that it was she that

was the true victim in the case.

She told the jury at her trial that she

was under his control,

that she was required to wear full Islamic dress,

and that was the reason why she was being abused by him.

(Steve) We wouldn't be human if we didn't, even

as police officers, have some sympathy

for a woman that's been abused and then turns on her abuser.

Of course, there's going to be sympathy.

There's going to be reasons why they do that.

But in this case, my sense is, and I think the entire team's sense,

as well, actually, the victim here

is the person that's been murdered.

If she had not attended the scene,

if she had not fraudulently

got that car, if she had not run him over,

maybe, maybe her story would hold more water.

It would probably be simpler for her to have carried out the act

herself and say, this was the culmination of years of abuse,

and I just couldn't take it any more,

which is one of the reasons why I suspect the jury

thought, well, you didn't do that.

You went to this group of rappers and said, here's 200 quid,

you do it for me, which somehow suggests somebody much

more cold, much more calculated.

(Jane) She got the murderers to the scene and then

she participated in the violence herself.

This isn't just somebody who simply

is a really nice person

who just was trying to protect themselves.

She's more dangerous than that.

She concocted this story in order to try

and persuade the jury that she was a victim of domestic abuse.

(Steve) And it was quite a hard trial.

Lots of things thrown at us throughout the trial.

I was personally accused of trying to

intimidate one of the accused

by lying to her, which was nonsense.

And the judge saw through that.

(David) It was a story the jury had to consider.

(Steve) Were the jury gonna sympathise with her?

I hope not.

Were they going to think, actually, she's a victim.

He deserves to die. I hope not.

But you never know until the jury comes back.

(David) The jury returned a guilty verdict, guilty

for the murder of her husband.

The killing of Nawajid was brutal and certainly premeditated.

In the eyes of law, did she intend

to commit grievous bodily harm?

Or did she intend to kill him on that day?

And the jury saw through that.

So it was... we're quite elated, really.

It was a good day for Nawajid's family and his friends, really,

who was quite upset, obviously.

This was a nice guy that worked hard for a living.

And he'd been killed in such a barbaric way, really.

(David) Faria Khan was convicted of murder

and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 20 years.

I think the judge summed it quite clearly when

he said, I don't believe the lies that you've

peddled throughout this court.

Regardless of Khan's backgrounds and the complexities in her life,

the fact is that Khan committed a murder.

Even if Faria Khan may have been horribly abused by her husband,

even if she felt that she'd been terribly treated,

the idea of meeting fire with fire

seems completely inappropriate.

(David) Two gang members were also

found guilty of Nawajid's murder and received prison sentences.

Meanwhile, Neelam Kauser, the teenager

responsible for introducing Faria to the killer gang,

was sentenced to 14 years.

She just went along with it, again,

to play up to this bit of a silly image of, look at us,

we're going out killing people.

So again, tragic is not the word, really.

(David) The two remaining rappers from the gang

were gaoled for conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm

and conspiracy to kidnap.

These aren't seasoned criminals.

These are young boys trying to be men, really.

And they did every... they made every mistake in the book, really.

When sentencing, the judge was very critical of the members

of the rap group for their willingness to get involved

in a crime such as this, and for the fact

that they seemed to be doing so merely

to gain respect within a fantasy world in which they lived.

Anybody stupid enough to sign up to murder somebody

who they don't really know, and anybody stupid enough

to want to do it for 50 pound each, gives

you a general idea of,

we're not talking the Brains of Britain here.

We're talking silly boys who just decided to get in up to the neck,

really.

She paid the money to amateurs to assist.

And it was the amateurs that, dare I say, let her plan down, really.

(David) For the investigation team,

the verdict had finally delivered justice.

We got a fantastic result for the family,

and allowing the family to move on.

What makes it more tragic and sinister in this investigation

is that they hunted him down, like a set of dogs...

like a pack of dogs, really.

(David) The real underlying truth of why Faria Khan killed

her husband remains elusive.

It's really difficult to speculate about why

Khan actually did what she did.

Ultimately, for me, that's irrelevant.

She committed a crime, and the worst of crimes.

(Steve) She just got desperate

that she just wanted her husband, for whatever reason,

and we still never got to that reason, probably just hatred, of,

I want him out of the way.

To organise your husband's death is terrible.

But that's a different level from being

the one who deals the final blow.

And that's what she did.

She wanted to be there to watch him injured, tortured.

And then she wanted to be the one who murdered him.

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