Saima Khan’s horrific murder by her own sister, Sabah, made news in Luton, United Kingdom, in 2016. An inquiry into the crime uncovered a scheme laced with hatred and resentment arising from an extramarital romance.
This terrible and frightening storey is shown on Investigation Discovery’s ‘Deadly Women: Lover Makes Three.’ To quell our interest about the case, we went deep to learn everything we could about it.
Who Killed Saima Khan And Why?
Saima Khan hailed from a household in Bedfordshire, England. Three generations of her family lived in the same house and practiced the basic Islamic family tradition of caring for and supporting one another.
Hafeez Rehman, Saima’s spouse, was a cab driver, while Saima worked as a caregiver. Together, the couple has four children.
Sabah, Saima’s sister, was also in the family. However, Saima was unaware that her sister and husband had been having an affair for nearly four years.
According to a detective, Sabah had developed a romantic interest in Hafeez. Sabah couldn’t accept that she would have to share Hafeez with someone else because of her infatuation, which had steadily evolved into a destructive fixation.
Sabah and Hafeez had frequent sexual encounters throughout time, and Sabah became pregnant once. Sabah had to abort the kid in 2012 to keep the affair a secret from her family.
Must Read: Where is Sabah Khan Today?
Hafeez later inquired if he could marry two sisters, but his religion barred it, according to his lawyer. The affair went on. Tensions between the two Khan sisters grew as a result of the romance.
Sabah is said to have moved out and been living independently from her family. However, Hafeez’s sympathies reportedly began to lean more towards his wife in 2016. When Sabah became more jealous, she looked up ways to kill someone and get away with it on the internet.
Sabah was babysitting her sister’s children on May 23, 2016. The rest of the family, including Hafeez, were in the local mosque for burial.
Sabah enticed Saima home late that night by sending her text messages assuring her that her youngest child was sobbing for her mother. A neighbor’s surveillance camera captured Saima entering her family’s home after 11 p.m.
She switched on the hallway lights, which were shut off 45 seconds later. Sabah attacked Saima for the next eight minutes with a knife he had purchased at the grocery.
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She stabbed Saima several times, nearly decapitating her. According to reports, she continued to stab her sister even after she died.
Saima had been stabbed 68 times, according to later reports. Saima’s neck had been punctured by one of the strikes, cutting multiple arteries and the jugular vein.
Saima’s screams were heard by neighbors, and Saima’s eldest daughter awoke in the middle of the incident, asking her aunt whether she was killing Saima.
Sabah then smashed a front door window & hid the murder weapon, as well as the bloodied black clothes she was wearing at the time of the murder.
Sabah then contacted her parents as well as police to report a robbery and her sister’s attack.
When the murder weapon was discovered in Sabah’s room, the investigating officers realised she was fooling others with the narrative of a heist gone awry and arrested her.
What Happened to Sabah Khan and Hafeez Rehman?
“She was a loving mother to four beautiful children, a dedicated wife, a treasured daughter, and the most caring of sisters,” Hafeez said of his wife.
He went on to say that Saima’s murder had broken the family apart. “This was a turning point in our lives where we wanted to watch our children grow up, cherish them, and spend quality time together as a family making memories,” he explained.
Hafeez also urged anyone with information about the crime to come forward and assist the investigation.
The authorities initially suspected Saima Khan’s death was the result of a burglary, but they soon realised otherwise. Sabah Khan first rejected the charges of murder.
Then, in October 2017, she amended her plea to guilty during a brief hearing at the Old Bailey. Various evidence of Sabah’s developing fascination with Hafeez was presented to the court during her sentencing.
According to a few social media communications read in court between Sabah and Hafeez, Sabah called her sister expletives and accused Hafeez of marrying Saima solely to obtain a passport. Sabah was then prevented from sending him any more messages by Hafeez.
Hafeez blamed Sabah for initiating the relationship between him and her in his interrogation testimony. Sabah allegedly threatened to harm herself if Hafeez ended their relationship.
Hafeez had received powerful messages from her proclaiming her love for him. The prosecutor told the court that Sabah had looked into various ways to murder someone, “interspersed with looking at Hafeez Rehman’s Facebook profile and inquiries as to whether falling in love is permissible in Islam.”
The investigation also turned up texts between Sabah and a Pakistani black magic practitioner in which she spoke about herself in the 3rd person and paid the magician £5,000 to “kill off Saima as swiftly as possible so my Sabah can get her Hafeez back.”
Rehman’s assertions that Sabah forced the affair were incorrect, according to a Queen’s Counsel. Despite Rehman’s claims that he tried to discontinue his relationship with Sabah, he said they had sexual encounters till days before Saima’s death.
A suitor for Sabah had also been turned down by Rehman. In a statement presented to the court, Hafeez expressed his regret for committing adultery and declared that “not a day goes by” that he does not regret his actions.
“My children are hurting the most,” he continued, “since they have lost the most important woman in their lives, their mother.”
After confessing to killing her sister, Sabah was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 22 years. She is still imprisoned in Bedfordshire, England.
Her legal counsel filed an appeal, but the judges dismissed it because “the minimum time imposed by the sentencing judge was plainly disproportionate,” according to the judges.
Hafeez Rehman’s Facebook profile appears to have been deleted, and he does not seem to have any other social media accounts. His present location is unknown.