Published: Tuesday, 28th September, 2010 2:30pm
'Obsessed' ex-boyfriend harassed Asha before killing her, court hears
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THE �deeply embittered� ex-boyfriend of stabbed schoolgirl Asha Muneer was �obsessed� by her and phoned her hundreds of times in the days before killing her, a court heard.
Gulamyr Akhter, 19, of Victoria Way, Newtown, denies murdering the Highdown School pupil on January 18 this year.
Prosecutor John Price, QC, told Reading Crown Court this morning that Akhter had called Asha�s two mobile phones 621 times from January 1 to 18, an average of 34 times per day. The calls were made from a phone he denied he owned, but Mr Price produced records from his friends� contact books and old bank account applications which he said proved the phone was Akhter�s.
The court heard that after Asha finished with Akhter in July last year, he sent her a series of hate-filled text messages, threatening to tell members of her family about their relationship and using a tirade of foul abuse.
He told her: �I�m going to make your life hell.�
The court heard phone records showed the timings of calls made by friends to Akhter matched precisely with CCTV images shown to the court yesterday (Monday) of a man in dark clothing, carrying a rucksack, walking with Asha through Kennet Island before she died, and again soon afterwards, occasionally speaking on a mobile and looking at its screen. Her body was found in an underpass on a towpath near the Foudry Brook and A33 relief road.
Mr Price also told the court that the knife found near the murder scene had Asha�s blood on it and appeared to be part of a set with three similar knives found at Akhter�s home.
He said Akhter had been picked up by friends, driven to a BP garage near Twyford where he bought a petrol can and a litre of petrol, then to a gated field where he lit a bonfire, incinerating a rucksack containing clothes and a mobile phone.
Police later found the field near Shurlock Row on January 25 and Mr Price said: �They found charred fabric and the remains of a mobile telephone, found to be contaminated with petrol.�
Mr Price told the jury the evidence painted �a very simple though very dreadful picture�.
He said: �Deeply embittered by her rejection of him and simply unable to accept it, in the late afternoon of January 18 this year, having first telephoned her on her phone, probably in order to confirm her whereabouts, then arranging a lift with a friend to near where she worked, and having taken with him a knife and a change of clothing in a rucksack and two mobile telephones, Gulamyr Akhter set out in order to find Asha Muneer and then to kill her. That�s what�s alleged.�
Akhter denies the murder charge. The trial continues.
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