Despite their seven-year age gap, sisters Sabah and Saima Khan were so close that neighbors often mistook them for twins. The siblings were inseparable, doing everything together from shopping trips to picking up Saima's children from school. They even lived together under the same roof of their parents' neat semi-detached home in Challney, Luton.
However, secretly, Sabah, then 27, harbored deep resentment toward her sister for having something she desperately craved: a relationship with Saima's husband, Hafeez Rehman. Sabah had engaged in a sordid four-year affair with taxi-driver Hafeez, sneaking off for sex in his car and in the family home while Saima, 34, was at work.
When Hafeez attempted to end the relationship, Sabah devised a twisted plan to kill her older sister and reclaim him. She first paid £5,000 to a witch doctor in Pakistan to curse her sibling, but when that scheme failed, she decided to carry out the murder herself.
On the night of May 23, 2016, Sabah lured Saima home early from work and attacked her with a kitchen knife as she entered the hallway. She stabbed Saima 68 times with such ferocity that she nearly decapitated her. When Saima's four sleeping children were awakened by the noise, one shouted down, 'Are you killing a mouse, aunty?'
Sabah initially deceived police, claiming her sister had been killed during a home invasion. However, detectives and a jury saw through her lies, and she was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 22 years.
The Aftermath
Saima and Sabah's parents still live in the same house but refuse to discuss the trauma of their daughter's murder a decade later. Meanwhile, Hafeez Rehman, the man at the center of the deadly love triangle, wasted no time moving on. He traveled to his native village of Gulpur in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and remarried in a small ceremony before bringing his new wife back to Luton, where they have since had two children.
A family source revealed that Hafeez was shunned by his extended family for his infidelity but is still seen dropping off his and Saima's children at their grandparents' home—the same house where their mother was killed. He never enters the home himself, instead parking up the street to pick up or drop off the children.
The Murder Plot
Sabah's obsession with Hafeez drove her to extreme measures. She searched the internet for 'poisonous snakes', 'how to hire a killer', and '16 steps to kill someone and not get caught'. She also contacted a fixer in Pakistan to use black magic, paying £5,000 to a witch doctor to 'finish off' Saima.
When that failed, she purchased a knife from Tesco the day before the murder. On the night of the killing, she switched off the lights for eight minutes while she stabbed Saima to death. She then staged the scene to look like a burglary, smashing a window and hiding the murder weapon and her bloodstained clothes in bin liners.
Police initially believed her story of a burglary gone wrong until they found the knife in her bedroom eight days later. During her trial, Sabah showed no emotion as she was jailed for life. Her appeal to reduce the sentence in 2017 was rejected, with judges ruling that the sentencing for the 'horrendous and brutal murder' was not 'manifestly excessive'.
