How West Yorkshire Police captured a killer

Yorkshire Post

A “violent, jealous, controlling” husband who stabbed his wife to death as she pushed their baby in a pram after tracking her to a women’s refuge was captured on CCTV casually walking around a city centre in the minutes after the murder.  Habibur Masum launched a “ferocious” daylight knife attack on Kulsuma Akter before leaving her “bleeding to death in the gutter” and calmly walking away from her and their seven-month-old son.  A court heard Masum, 26, followed Ms Akter, 27, to a refuge in Bradford where she had been staying after he held a knife to her throat following an assault at their home in Greater Manchester.  Here, West Yorkshire Police explain how they captured Masum and brought him to justice.

Transcript

00:00In April of last year, 27-year-old Kulsuma Akhtar was walking along here, Westgate in Bradford.

00:08At the time, she was pushing her seven-month-old son in his pram.

00:13Unfortunately, and despite several conditions imposed upon him,

00:19her estranged husband, Habiba Massam, had tracked her down and approached her.

00:23He grabbed the pram, and it was here where they have a short conversation, only a few moments,

00:29where we believe that he is trying to entice Kulsuma back into their relationship.

00:36And when she rejected that idea is when the unthinkable happened.

00:42Massam grabbed a knife from his jacket, and he repeatedly stabbed her

00:45in what can only be described as a sustained and horrific attack.

00:52Many people tried to help her, but unfortunately, she died from her injuries.

00:56Massam then calmly walked away as though nothing had happened.

01:00He walked through the streets of Bradford, and he caught a bus up to the Killinghall Road area of Bradford,

01:05where we believe he then used further public transport to facilitate his escape from Bradford.

01:12The next 24 hours in the investigation was crucial.

01:15There was a lot of hard work and a significant amount of CCTV trawling,

01:20which essentially enabled us to identify and then formally name Habiba Massam as the suspect in Kulsuma's murder.

01:29And a national manhunt was then set up by the Homicide and Major Inquiry Team within West Yorkshire.

01:34The suspect in this investigation, who details have been widely circulated,

01:40and we are doing everything in our power to locate him.

01:43We've been overwhelmed with public support, and I would like to thank everyone who has so far assisted with our investigation.

01:51Over the next 72 hours, my team were able to track Massam, 175 miles south of Bradford to the Aylesbury area.

02:03Armed police officers were then able to effect his arrest in the early hours of Tuesday the 9th of April,

02:10and he was quickly brought back to West Yorkshire, where he was charged with murder and several other offences.

02:15More than 400 exhibits and 250 hours of CCTV and, of course, several other lines of inquiry were captured as a result of the investigation.

02:27That was used to piece together the moments leading up to Kulsuma's death and the immediate aftermath.

02:34And that was subsequently used by the prosecution in order to successfully convict Massam of murder.

02:41Massam took Kulsuma away from her son in the most horrific way.

02:45And our thoughts remain with him and her family.

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