‘Obsessed uncle rapes, kills Woman, padlocks body in a freezer

A young woman was raped and murdered by her “obsessed” uncle before her body was padlocked in a deep freezer, a court heard.

 

Celine Dookhran, 20, was kidnapped along with a second woman by Mujahid Arshid, 33, and his employee Vincent Tappu, 28, who took them to a six-bedroom house that Arshid, a builder, had been working at, the Old Bailey heard.

 

There they were raped and their throats cut in what prosecutors described as a “horrific crime” on July 19 last year.

 

Arshid considered dissolving the bodies in acid or hiding them in a chest-high freezer he installed two days before, it was claimed.

 

The second woman managed to survive and raised the alarm from hospital, leading to the discovery of Miss Dookhran’s body.

Opening the prosecution case, Crispin Aylett QC warned jurors: “The evidence that gives rise to those charges is, I am afraid, simply horrific. You will have to steel yourselves for what is to come.”

 

Mr Aylett said Arshid had become “obsessed” with Miss Dookhran but knew that she was having a sexual relationship with her boyfriend, a Libyan Muslim.

Realising she was “beyond his clutches”, he decided that if he could not have her then “nobody else would”, and formulated a plan to kidnap her.

 

The prosecutor told the court that the night before the murder, a family meeting took place – attended by Arshid who had armed himself with an axe – in which they urged Celine to end her relationship, wanting her to marry a Pakistani, not a Libyan.

“Obsessed” – Mujahid Arshid enlisted the help of Vincent Tappu to kidnap his niece

The following day, on July 19, Arshid and his accomplice Tappu burst into Miss Dookhran’s room, stuffing socks into both women’s mouths, which they also covered with tape. Their hands and feet were tied together and each of them was wrapped in a builder’s dust sheet.”

Arshid scooped up clothes, underwear and phones to give the “entirely false” impression Miss Dookhran had run away, it was claimed.

 

Mr Aylett said the women were taken from the house wrapped in dust sheets and put in the boot of the Arshid’s pick up truck. Tappu played no further part, jurors were told.

The court heard that Arshid had the set of keys to a six-bedroomed detached house between Wimbledon and Kingston where he had been working and took the women there, tying them to pipes in the utility room.