Cabbie who killed his family will never be freed from jail

Cabbie who killed his family will never be freed from jail
13.03.07



Rahan Arshad: found guilty of murdering his wife and children

Abbas, 8, and Adam, 11, whose bodies were found with sister Henna, 6, and mother Uzma

A man who beat his wife and three children to death because she had been having an affair will spend the rest of his life in prison.

Rahan Arshad, 36, was told that in his case "life would mean life" after he was found guilty of killing his wife Uzma and their children Adam, 11, Abbas, eight, and daughter Henna, six.

Arshad, a taxi driver, fled to Thailand after the bloodbath but he was traced and brought back to Britain to stand trial.

His wife had had a three-year affair with a family friend, Naseer Iqbal, a married father of four.

Arshad had left when he discovered the affair in 2004 but last year moved back in with her.

Mrs Arshad was uneasy at their reunion, telling her brother "count the days until he kills me".

It was on July 28 last year that Arshad's rage took hold after taking the family on a daytrip to Blackpool.

He beat his wife on the head with a rounders bat at their home in Cheadle Hulme, Greater Manchester. He then took the children downstairs and clubbed them to death one by one.

Yesterday, a jury at Manchester Crown Court took barely two hours to reject his claim that his 32-year-old wife had killed the children herself and that he had attacked her in a fury after discovering what she had done.

Sentencing him, Mr Justice David Clarke said: "Life imprisonment in your case means life. You killed your entire family in circumstances of great brutality."

Speaking for the first time yesterday, Mr Iqbal, a 41-year-old delivery driver, said the affair had ended several months before the murders.

"I don't feel any responsibility," he said. "What happened is nothing to do with me."