The black magic love triangle that saw a woman stab her sister to death because she wanted her husband for herself… and what the love rat at the centre of the family bloodbath did next
Even though there was a seven-year age difference between them, sisters Sabah and Saima Khan were so close that their neighbors thought they were twins.
The siblings were inseparable and did everything together, from shopping trips to picking up Saima’s kids from school.
They even lived together in a clean and tidy semi-detached house under the same roof of their parents in Challney, Luton.
But Sabah, then 27, secretly hated her sister for having something she longed for: a relationship with her husband Hafeez Rehman.
Sabah had embarked on a sordid four-year affair with taxi driver Hafeez, and while Saima, 34, was at work, the pair would sneak off to have sex in his car and at the family’s home.
When Hafeez finally tried to break off the relationship, Sabah came up with a twisted plan to kill her sister and take her back for herself.
He paid a witch doctor in Pakistan £5,000 to curse his brother, but when this half-baked plot failed he decided to carry out the execution himself.
One night, he brought Saima home from work early and attacked her with a kitchen knife as she stepped into the hallway.
In the morning he stabbed his victim 68 times and nearly decapitated her with such ferocity.
When Saima’s four sleeping children woke up with a noise, one of them shouted to Sabah from their bedroom: ‘Are you killing a mouse, auntie?’
He spun a web of lies when the police arrived and claimed his sister had been brutally murdered during a home invasion gone wrong.
But detectives and the jury saw through his deception, and he was sentenced to life in prison for this horrific murder.
Saima and Sabah’s parents still live in the same house but understandably refuse to talk about the trauma of their daughter’s murder ten years later.
So what happened to the man at the heart of the deadly love triangle?
Shockwaves ripped through the Luton town of Challney when ordinary mother-of-four Saima Khan (pictured) was murdered in the hallway of her home.
To the horror of her family, Saima (right) was killed by none other than her beloved younger sister Sabah Khan (left).
Saima’s husband, Hafeez Rehman, was at the center of the twisted love triangle that separated the two sisters. He had a secret affair with his sister-in-law for four years, having sex with her in taxis and at the Khan family home while Saima was at work.
Saima’s husband and parents attended a late-night funeral on May 23, 2016, and when they returned home at 11.30pm, they saw Saima’s body lying in a pool of blood. Police initially suspected Saima was killed in a botched burglary
The Daily Mail revealed that despite Hafeez portraying a grieving husband in court and at memorial services following his wife’s death, he wasted no time in moving on with his life.
He returned to his hometown of Gulpur in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and married his second wife in a small, intimate ceremony, then brought her back to Luton, where they have since had two children together.
A source told the Mail that he was ostracized by his extended family in Gulpur for his infidelity, but he was still often seen dropping his and Saima’s children off at their grandparents’ house, the same house where their mother was murdered.
She never dares enter the house, instead parking on the street to pick up and drop off her children.
A family friend said: ‘After the events, he is no longer loved in the family.
‘You see, they [Hafeez and Saima] Since they were both from the same family, it caused a lot of problems.
‘His extended family is kind of estranged from him.’
But while Hafeez was enjoying a fresh start with his new family, Khans was forced to pick up the pieces of a crime that sent shockwaves through his community that are still being felt a decade later.
On May 23, 2016, Saima and Sabah’s parents, along with Hafeez, returned from the evening funeral to the scenes of a horror movie.
Their eldest daughter, Saima, lay dead in a pool of blood in their hallway, her head nearly severed. Their younger daughter, Sabah, escaped unharmed but was covered in her sister’s blood.
Hello, I’m Alex Matthews, editor of Crime Squad.
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Police were called and Sabah claimed her sister had been stabbed to death during a botched burglary.
He was allegedly in the shower and came out to see his beloved sister lifeless in the hallway.
At first, no one had any reason to doubt his story.
Sabah could not be expected to hurt even Saima.
A family friend who lives on the same road also said: ‘It was 23.30. I woke up because I heard screaming outside and it was their mother.
‘When we came out the paramedics were already there. You could see Saima’s body in the corridor.
‘In the morning he actually asked me to go into the house and go upstairs to make sure the kids were okay.
‘They were very close, so Sabah getting involved was the last thing on my mind.
‘He was very calm’ [on the night]”It’s like nothing happened.”
They added: ‘He looked perfectly fine, himself and all. It wasn’t a normal way for someone to react.’
The truth was too terrible to contemplate. In the morning, he stabbed his sister with the kitchen knife he bought from Tesco the day before.
He then took off his bloody clothes, put them in a trash can along with the murder weapon, and hid them under cardboard boxes in his room.
Days later, detectives seized evidence during a search of the home.
Image: The murder weapon Sabah used to stab her sister 68 times
CCTV footage revealed Sabah bought the knife from a Tesco store before killing his defenseless sister
In the morning, he was accused of murdering his sister, and the sobering details of the affair were eventually revealed.
The court heard Hafeez impregnated his sister-in-law because she refused to use birth control and Sabah was forced to have an abortion rather than reveal their relationship.
Hafeez had no plans to leave his wife for his mistress, but Sabah fell madly in love and wanted her ‘all for himself’.
The taxi driver planned to move out of the Khan family house with Saima and her children in order to get away from him.
However, family sources claimed that Saima, who was unaware that her husband was sleeping with her sister, did not want to move away from her family, and initially an outbuilding was built in the garden for them to live.
Seeing no other choice but to disable her sister, Sabah began planning the murder that would destroy her family and cause her to be sentenced to life imprisonment.
Bitter messages sent to Hafeez show Sabah calling her sister a “b****” and in one message promising to rip out her “heart” and show her what she means to him.
Sabah also started researching ‘poisonous snakes’, ‘how to hire a murderer’ and ’16 steps to kill someone and not get caught’ on the internet.
He eventually contacted a ‘fixer’ in Pakistan to kill Saima using black magic and paid a witch doctor £5,000 to ‘finish off’ his sister.
He messaged the mechanic in the third person and wrote: ‘I’m sorry for bothering you over and over again.
‘My friend is very sad now Hefeez doesn’t even look at him… he says he realizes his mistake… Finish Saima as soon as possible so Sabah can get Hefeez back.’
After this failed he decided to take matters into his own crazy hands.
Sabah bought a knife the day before and at around 23:00 on May 23, 2016, he texted Saima that her children were crying and made her come home.
When Saima entered, the lights were turned off for eight minutes, during which time she was stabbed to death in a wild frenzy.
In the morning, he tried to make the scene look like a robbery, breaking the window and hiding the murder weapon and bloody clothes in trash cans.
He told officers he found Saima lying dead during a burglary gone wrong and officers believed him until they found the murder weapon in her room.
Body camera footage shown at Sabah’s hearing could be seen in the video describing how Saima tried to stop the bleeding by covering her wounds.
When asked why there was blood on his hands by a police officer, he claimed that he had injured himself due to ‘glass’ shattering on the ground after the ‘break-in’.
A family source said no one thought Sabah would kill her sister because they were so close.
They told the Mail: ‘Two sisters, you never see them apart. The two of them were always together.
Crime Squad can reveal Hafeez returned to his home village in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and remarried, then returned to Luton with his new wife
Before the police arrived at the scene of the murder, Sabah had tried to steal by breaking the window before calling the police and claiming that her sister had been killed by an intruder while she was in the shower.
Detectives first investigated Sabah’s burglary allegations before arresting him eight days later when they found the knife in a garbage bag in his bedroom (pictured)
‘Every time we saw them they looked like twins, even though there was a few years difference between them. They were so close.
‘They would always go together when picking up Saima’s children from school or going shopping.
‘I couldn’t believe this incident. I think Sabah has become very obsessed with him. He was just more interested in her while they were spending time.’
During the hearing, Hafeez had tried to downplay his role in the incident, claiming that he had been forced to have sex with her for four years.
However, Sabah’s defense lawyer, Jo Sidhu QC, said Hafeez “began exploring his options” during the incident, even investigating whether marrying his sister-in-law was permissible in Islam.
While Sidhu said he tried to break off the relationship, he argued that their relationship continued sexually until days before the murder and that Hafeez even warned a suitor who started having a relationship with Sabah.
In the murder case, the claim that Sabah was ‘a lonely individual, had mental health problems and had cut and strangled herself in the past’ was heard in court.
While his defense argued that ‘regret will infect the rest of his days’, he showed no emotion as he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 22 years.
He appealed to have his sentence reduced in 2017 but was unsuccessful after judges ruled the sentence for the ‘horrific and brutal murder’ was not ‘manifestly excessive’.
