Horrifying moment husband wheels suitcase containing murdered wife from home while carrying child
A husband who strangled his wife in front of her two children and lover on a video call was captured wheeling the suitcase containing her body out of his home.
Aminam Rahman, 46, has been convicted of murder after he stuffed Suma Begum, 24, who was either unconscious or dead, into a suitcase before throwing it into the River Lea, a tributary of the Thames which runs through east London.
CCTV footage has emerged of Rahman leaving an elevator in his apartment block in east London, while wheeling a suitcase and carrying a child. He then drags the black bag through the lobby and exits the building.
Her decomposed body was found on the river bank 10 days later by a mudlarker.
On Wednesday, Rahman was found guilty by an Old Bailey jury of murdering his wife in a flat in east London on April 29 last year.
The court heard his attack on Ms Begum was witnessed by her children, aged two and four months, and by her boyfriend Shahin Miah, 24, with whom she had begun a relationship after meeting him on TikTok.
Mr Miah, who was living in the United Arab Emirates and saw the attack on a video call, recorded the events leading to Ms Begum’s death on video and later handed the footage to police.
Mr Miah sobbed in court as he described a video call from Rahman in which he threatened to kill Ms Begum, who was on the bed in the background.
Speaking through an interpreter, Mr Miah said: “She wanted to run away and he then grabbed her throat.”
There were “three screaming sounds” before the video froze and nothing more could be seen after Rahman’s initial lunge.
Mr Miah went on: “I saw that frothing was coming out of Suma’s mouth and he showed me on the video and he was swearing at me.”
In a second video call from Rahman that night, he told Mr Miah: “Look, I have killed (Begum) and now you get ready.”
Victim met lover after a year in UK
The court heard that Ms Begum married Rahman, a restaurant worker, in an arranged Islamic ceremony over the phone in 2019. In 2020, she travelled from Bangladesh to live with him in the UK.
A year later, Ms Begum met Mr Miah via social media app TikTok, later moving on to WhatsApp.
About seven or eight months into their “intimate, sexual” online relationship, Mr Miah found out she was married to Rahman, he said.
He said he told Rahman of the relationship, which continued despite Ms Begum remaining married.
Jocelyn Ledward KC, prosecuting, told jurors: “It is clear this young woman was no longer happy in her marriage, she was fairly openly in a relationship with another man, and she had expressed the desire to leave the defendant, something about which neither he nor her family were happy.
“But whether he was motivated by rage, shame, or pure jealousy, or a more complex mix of cultural expectations and emotions, may not matter.”
Ms Ledward said either Ms Begum was dead when she was put in the suitcase or she drowned in the water. Rahman was captured on CCTV throwing the case into the river.
The prosecutor added: “He deliberately disposed of her body in such a way that he hoped, no doubt, her body would simply be washed out to sea and never found, and that the fiction he began to create almost immediately, that she had simply abandoned him and the children after a minor argument, would be believed.”
Giving evidence, Rahman accepted he had killed Ms Begum but claimed he acted in defence of the older child, saying she had threatened to kill the two-year-old and thrown the child against a wall.
He had denied murder and assaulting Ms Begum by beating but had pleaded guilty to preventing the lawful and decent burial of her body.
Following a month-long trial, the jury deliberated for four hours and 27 minutes to find Rahman guilty of all the charges against him.
Mr Justice Bennathan remanded Rahman, formerly of Bridgwater, Somerset, in custody to be sentenced on July 31.
