BENGALURU: Obsessed with her, 53-year-old tech professional Imdad Basha couldn’t come to terms with the fact that she was moving on.
He spied on her, tried to control and stop her. But when nothing worked, he did the unimaginable: He poisoned her to death and tried to create an illusion of a joint suicide.
However, Basha’s chilling cover-up came to the fore during investigation when police found out that the victim, 45-year-old Uzma Khan, was fed ‘real’ poison in her food while he consumed non-lethal toilet cleaner to mislead everyone.
While Basha is a resident of Spice Garden area near Marathahalli, Uzma is from Kacharakanahalli.
The two, who happen to be relatives, had got separated from their respective spouses eight years ago and were in a relationship. Their families had initiated discussions on getting them married, but the proposal fell through because of personal reasons. However, Basha and Uzma were in touch with each other.
Their relationship took an intriguing turn on Dec 31 when Basha sent Uzma pictures of him cooking in his flat. Uzma replied: “That looks sizzling”. After that, she went to his flat.
On Jan 1, he sent messages to relatives stating that Uzma and he had consumed poison together after entering into a suicide pact.
The relatives found Uzma dead and shifted a semi-conscious Basha to hospital. While everyone assumed that the two had decided to end their lives as circumstances did not allow them to live together, Uzma’s postmortem report had a shocker: It indicated that she died much before Basha sent out the messages from his phone.
Fuelled by jealousy
Police intensified investigation and found that Basha had masterminded the murder and cover-up after learning about Uzma’s upcoming marriage to a Pakistani national working in Australia.
He did not want to let go of her, police said. Based on Uzma’s brother Himayath Khan’s complaint, police arrested Basha.
“A report from the forensic science laboratory will throw more light on the cause of Uzma’s death and answer doubts like whether she was strangled to death or poisoned.
But there is a difference of at least 6-8 hours between her death and Basha sending the message,” an investigating officer said.
According to the complaint, Basha, by installing software on Uzma’s mobile, took control of her device. “This was how he came to know about Uzma’s marriage talk with the Australian man. Since then, he had been fighting with her regularly,” Khan’s complaint read.
