A builder has been found guilty of raping and murdering his 20-year-old niece and dumping her body in a freezer before trying to kill another woman.
Mujahid Arshid, 33, kidnapped Celine Dookhran, 20, and the other young woman on July 19.
They were bound, gagged and wrapped in dust sheets before being taken to a £1.5million six-bed house Arshid was working on in Kingston-upon-Thames, south west London.
Once there Arshid raped both women before slitting Miss Dookhran’s throat and dumping her body in a chest-high deep freezer he had installed two days earlier.
Mujahid Arshid (left) kidnapped Celine Dookhran (right) and another young woman on July 19 before murdering Ms Dookhran
The two women were bound, gagged and wrapped in dust sheets before being taken to a £1.5million six-bed house Arshid was working on in south west London
He then slashed the other woman’s neck but she managed to survive, and convinced him not to attack her and that they could run away together in a bid to stay alive.
At the Old Bailey today, Arshid, of no fixed address, was convicted of murder, attempted murder, two counts of kidnap, and two counts of rape.
Family members of Miss Dookhran shouted ‘yes’ as the verdicts were announced.
Arshid shouted, ‘your honour what’s this’ and told the family to ‘shut up’ while gesturing with his hands.
He then tried to blame his other victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, yelling it was her who killed Miss Dookhran adding ‘ she is lying to all of you’.
As he was lead from the dock he shouted ‘Before I die I will prove that b**** wrong’.
Arshid claimed the other woman he was accused of raping had killed Miss Dookhran (pictured left), after catching him having sex with her and murdering her in a jealous rage
Arshid was cleared of possessing a firearm with intent – a Taser.
He was also found guilty of one count of sexual assault, and one count of assault by penetration, involving the second woman between November 2008 and November 2010.
Co-accused Vincent Tappu, 28, a labourer of Acton, west London, was cleared of two counts of kidnap, and one count of possessing a firearm with intent..
Tappu broke down in the dock and wept as the verdicts were returned.
He said ‘thank you’ to the jury, while his supporters in the public gallery shook their fists in happiness and wept.
The jury deliberated for about 14 hours before returning verdicts.
Members of Miss Dookhran’s family were sat in court to hear the verdicts.
Arshid told the second victim after the murder: ‘I am not good for you, I am a nasty horrible evil man.’
She escaped after they met his brother, and as she left Arshid said: ‘I knew I should have just finished it with you as well.’
She raised the alarm from hospital and gave details of the house, leading officers to discover the body in the padlocked freezer.
Arshid by then had fled to Folkestone, Kent, where he was later arrested in a Holiday Inn, with the padlock keys still in his possession.
He told his wife during an angry Whatsapp exchange he would call her from Pakistan.
She replied: ‘Don’t. You’re dead to me.’ He responded: ‘So is Celine apparently??’
Arshid hatched his murderous plan after he became ‘obsessed’ with Miss Dookhran, who worked in Barclay’s bank in Sutton.
But he knew that she was having a sexual relationship with her boyfriend Omar, a Libyan Muslim.
Realising she was ‘beyond his clutches’, he resolved if he could not have her then ‘nobody else would’, prosecutor Crispin Aylett QC said.
He plotted to kidnap both women for about three weeks before.
Mr Aylett said: ‘Thereafter, and it is as bizarre as it is terrible, he intended to rape them before murdering them and disposing of their bodies.
‘He considered either putting them in acid, in order that their bodies might dissolve, or else concealing them in a deep freezer.’
The night before the murder, a family meeting took place.
Pressure was put on Miss Dookhran and her boyfriend to end their relationship by her family, who wanted her to date a Pakistani Muslim.
They agreed to stop seeing each other, but no could have been sure they meant it, the prosecution said.
The next morning, taking advantage of the uncertainty surrounding her position, Arshid put his plan into action.
He burst into Miss Dookhran’s home wearing a balaclava and gloves.
Arshid scooped up clothes and phones, to give the false impression she had run away, and grabbed her underwear before leaving the house with the women.
In the weeks before, Arshid searched online for chest freezers, ‘at what temperature does the human body freeze’, and ‘can a person freeze to death’.
He read a Wikipedia page about the infamous acid bath murderer John George Haigh, who was hanged in 1949 for murdering six people and disposing of their remains including in acid baths.
Arshid offered the surviving victim up for rape on an internet chat room while talking to an undercover detective in 2013 when she was a teenager.
He said: ‘It’s going to be a very memorable Christmas. These type of girls deserve rape. Lol.’
Arshid was questioned by police about the posts but no further action was taken, after he claimed it was an employee.
Giving evidence, he said the surviving victim killed Miss Dookhran in a fit of jealousy after he had consensual sex with them both.
She ran at him with the blade and they wrestled in the bathroom, when she sustained her injuries, he claimed.
He said: ‘I had seen what this girl has already done and I’m not willing to be her next victim. I’m fighting for my life.’
Arshid said he bought the freezer on Gumtree to make biodiesel, and blamed searches on his computer about dissolving bodies in acid on the second victim.
A search was made for Harry Potter, which he said he would never have done as he hates the fictional wizard.
He admitted searching John Haigh, but it was research for a drain cleaner formula he was creating called ‘Haigh it’s gone’.
Tappu denied any involvement in the plot, claiming he only went near the house where the women were kidnapped to pick up some money he was owed, but did not go inside.