Woman's miracle escape after 'obsessed builder slit friend's throat'

A young woman texted her mother to say ‘he’s going to kill me’ as she tried to raise the alarm after her rapist abducted her to satisfy his sexual fantasies, a court has heard.

Mujahid Arshid, 33, is accused of the kidnap, rape and murder of his niece Celine Dookhran, 20, and the attempted murder of a second woman.

Speaking to officers from her hospital bed, the alleged victim, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, said she had promised Arshid she loved him and they could be together when he attacked her and Ms Dookhran on 19 July.

Ms Dookhran, an Indian Muslim, was reportedly in a relationship with an Arab Muslim, who she was planning to marry – a situation which is said to have angered some members of her family.

Arshid allegedly kidnapped both girls in a suspected ‘honour killing’

The woman told officers: ‘He brought Celine down in a bag, picked her up and put her into the chest freezer. All I could see was her legs sticking out. I had to act like it was not affecting me.’

The woman said she spent a week in St George’s Hospital and had two operations, as she recovered from knife wounds from the alleged attack.

The survivor said Ms Dookhran was wearing her blue Barclays work uniform when they were snatched and taken to an empty house in Kingston, south-west London, on the morning of July 19 last year.

Arshid bundled them into his pick-up truck wearing a balaclava, glasses and pyjamas with the help of an accomplice, who also hid his face and wore gloves, the court heard.

Over the course of the day, Arshid allegedly went on to molest both women and cut their throats, dumping Ms Dookran’s body in a freezer at the property he was renovating.

The second woman told jurors from behind a screen, on the fourth day of the trial: ‘When eventually I got hold of a phone, my first instinct was to call someone for help.’

She texted her boyfriend from an old mobile phone, saying: ‘Don’t message or call. Or reply. I have been kid booed (typo). Kidnapped.’

She added that Arshid had sexually abused her for about a year when she was in her early teens.

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She claimed Arshid called her a ‘wh*re and a sl*t’ when she opened up about the abuse years later, and that one relative warned her not to go to the police as people ‘would look at you in a bad way’.

Arshid, of no fixed address, and his alleged accomplice Vincent Tappu, 28, of Spencer Road, Acton, west London, deny the charges against them.

He denies murder, attempted murder, rape of both women and the previous sexual assault and assault by penetration of the surviving woman when she was about 13.

Along with Tappu, he has also pleaded not guilty to both women’s kidnap and false imprisonment, and possession of a firearm with intent.

The trial continues…