Murder accused ‘was seen grinning on bus CCTV after stabbing wife to death’

Kulsuma Akter, 27, suffered more than 25 knife injuries in an attack by Habibur Masum, 26, after he confronted her in the street while she was pushing their seven-month-old son in a pram on April 6 last year.

A trial has heard that Masum tracked Ms Akter to a refuge in Bradford, where she had been staying after he allegedly held a knife to her throat following an assault at their home in Oldham in November 2023.

Giving his closing speech to jurors on Tuesday, prosecutor Stephen Wood KC showed jurors CCTV of Masum walking through Bradford after the attack, saying there were no signs of him being “distressed”, as he had claimed in his evidence.

Mr Wood told Bradford Crown Court that a close-up of Masum getting on a bus showed him smiling, which “removed all possible doubt” about his state of mind.

“There were no tears, there was no distress. Perhaps, members of the jury, the smile you can clearly see form as he gets on that bus is as a result of him thinking at that point he’s getting away. The smiling killer.”

Mr Wood said that although Masum was suffering from depression at the time, that did not provide an explanation for the killing.

“It was not his depression which caused him to kill Kulsuma, it was his other longstanding personality traits of controlling behaviour, jealousy and paranoia. She had rejected him. She had to die,” he said.

“And were there any residual thought that this was about seeing his son – having left his wife literally in the gutter, bleeding to death, he leaves his son alone.

“He could so easily have walked away with him. But he knew if he walked away with that pram it would increase his chances of getting caught.

“But he very quickly got himself out of the area and down to Aylesbury.

“In the meantime he changed his appearance – shaved his beard, cut his hair, changed his clothing.”

Mr Wood said the relationship between Masum and Ms Akter was “an abusive relationship characterised by his jealousy, possessiveness and controlling behaviour with violence being both used and threatened”.

Mr Wood told jurors that in July 2023 Ms Akter went to stay with her brother because of Masum’s controlling behaviour, leading him to threaten to harm himself with a knife.

The prosecutor said that over two days in November 2023, Masum “abused his wife” by assaulting her, threatening to kill her and holding a knife to her throat when she received an innocuous message from a male colleague at the cake factory where she worked.

“That was his jealousy. Once more, he took possession of a knife. The next time it would have fatal consequences,” Mr Wood said.

“He is a man who resorts to violence… and when he resorts to actual violence, it’s with a knife.”

Masum said during the trial that he had taken a knife with him on the day he killed Ms Akter because he intended to stab himself if she did not “listen to him”.

Mr Wood said Masum’s threats of self-harm were “empty threats”, adding: “He has never made an attempt on his own life, he has never harmed himself. These are examples of his emotional blackmail.”

He told jurors that during the fatal attack on Ms Akter, Masum put her on the ground, stabbed her “many, many” times, kicked her “as a final insult”, then took hold of the back of her head and cut her throat.

Mr Wood said: “Such a brutal and violent assault by the defendant, culminating in a deliberate cutting of his wife’s throat, only points to an intention to kill. That is what he wanted, that is what he did.”

Masum denies murdering Ms Akter but has pleaded guilty to manslaughter and possession of a knife.

He also denies two charges of assault, one count of making threats to kill and one charge of stalking.

The trial continues.