A ‘violent, jealous, controlling’ husband who stabbed his wife to death as she pushed their seven-month-old baby in a pram has been convicted of murder.
‘Smiling killer’ Habibur Masum, 26, tracked down Kulsuma Akter, 27, to a women’s refuge after she forgot to turn off her location on Snapchat.
He then confronted her on a street in Bradford, West Yorkshire last April, where in a savage broad daylight attack, he repeatedly plunged the blade into his screaming partner, stabbing her more than 25 times before slitting her throat.
Afterwards, Masum was captured on CCTV grinning as he boarded a bus to make his escape, having left his wife for dead and abandoning their baby in the street.
The jury heard obsessive Masum banned his wife from wearing makeup, was constantly checking her mobile phone and stopped her drinking tea, because he didn’t like the drink.
Her killing came just five months after ‘cold-blooded’ Masum had chillingly warned his wife ‘I am going to murder you’.
Masum, of Burnley, already pleaded guilty to manslaughter and possession of a bladed article, but had denied a charge of murder.
However, a jury at Bradford Crown Court today convicted the ‘abusive’ 26-year-old of murder. He was also convicted of assault, making threats to kill, and stalking, and now faces life in prison.
Masum wiped away tears in the dock after a jury returned a unanimous verdict following five hours and 40 minutes of deliberation.
Habibur Masum, 26, walking with his wife Kulsuma Akter and their baby
Masum (centre) on a bus prior to him attacking his wife
Masum calmly walking away after he attacked his wife
Habibur Masum has been convicted of the savage murder of his wife Kulsuma Akter (the pair are pictured together on their wedding day)
Masum had made several threats to kill Ms Akter, a court heard
The scene in Westgate, Bradford on April 7 2024. A murder investigation was launched after Ms Akter was stabbed in Bradford city centre in broad daylight
During his trial, the court heard how the couple met and married in Bangladesh, and came to the UK in 2022 after Masum obtained a student visa and enrolled on a masters course to study marketing.
But the couple’s relationship soon broke down in November 2023 after 18 months of marriage, which had seen Masum making threats to kill his partner in July of that year.
Today it can be revealed Masum would have been locked up less than four months before the murder if warnings by the CPS had been heeded.
On November 26, 2023 he was charged with assault by beating and making threats to kill against Ms Akter.
Two days earlier the jealous student had come at his terrified wife armed with a knife after flying into a rage over an innocuous text message she had received from a colleague.
Masum demanded ‘tell me what your relationship is with him, or I will kill you’ and put the knife to her throat as she cradled their baby.
Frightened for her life and fearing he would cut her throat, she clutched her son to her in a desperate hope that he wouldn’t attack her.
The day before, in what the trial heard was a chilling forewarning of what was to come, he had told her: ‘I am going to murder you, and the police will be taking me.’
Masum ambushed his wife as she was pushing a pram with their baby in before repeatedly stabbing her and slitting her throat (he is seen pictured at Bradford Crown Court in a sketch)
Ms Akter said after an assault that her husband would ‘be okay once he kills me’ and asked Ms Begum to look after the baby
Masum was arrested and his wife was allocated a social worker, confiding to her she feared he was going to kill her.
When he appeared from police custody at Tameside Magistrates’ Court on November 27, 2023, entering not guilty pleas, the Crown Prosecution Service argued he should remain locked up.
But fatefully magistrates instead granted him bail on condition he did not contact Ms Akter and another person or go to her address.
She and her son were placed in a refuge in what was meant to be a secret location in Bradford.
Meanwhile her estranged husband – a free man due to the court’s decision – dedicated himself to tracking her down.
On April 6 last year – two days before she was due to be rehoused – and believing her estranged husband was in Spain, Ms Atker ‘felt safe to leave the refuge’.
However, at 3pm Ms Akter – who was walking with a friend while pushing her seven-month-old son in a pram – was shocked to be confronted by Masum, Bradford Crown Court heard.
CCTV footage played in court showed Masum walking with Ms Akter until he stopped her, then spinning her and the pram around before pulling a knife from his jacket.
CCTV of Masum from Sunday April 7 2024. He is pictured wearing a duffle coat, tracksuit bottoms with a small black emblem on the left pocket and maroon trainers
Prosecutor Steven Wood KC said: ‘He grabs Kulsuma and pushes her into a wall, stabbing her to the body.
‘You will see that Kulsuma then goes to the ground only for the defendant to launch a ferocious and deadly attack.
‘When the defendant had finished stabbing her, as a final act of sheer gratuitous violence, he kicks Kulsuma before moving away, but not before ensuring that he disposed of the knife.’
The court heard Ms Akter suffered multiple stab wounds to her body and face including a wound to the neck which partly cut her windpipe and severed her left jugular vein.
Mr Wood said her killing represented ‘cold-blooded, calculated, pre-meditated murder’.
During his closing speech on Monday, the prosecutor told jurors the defendant appeared to revel in his crime, grinning after he left his wife dying.
Jurors were shown Masum walking through Bradford after the attack, with Mr Woods saying there were no signs of him being ‘distressed’, as he had claimed in his evidence.
Mr Wood told the court a close-up of Masum getting on a bus showed him smiling, which ‘removed all possible doubt’ about his state of mind.
Police officers in white forensics gear stand within a cordon at the scene of the stabbing in Bradford
Masum was caught on CCTV ‘smiling’ as he got onto a bus to make his escape, jurors heard
‘There were no tears, there was no distress. Perhaps, members of the jury, the smile you can clearly see form as he gets on that bus is as a result of him thinking at that point he’s getting away. The smiling killer.’
Mr Wood said that although Masum was suffering from depression at the time, this did not provide an explanation for the savage slaughter of his partner.
‘It was not his depression which caused him to kill Kulsuma, it was his other longstanding personality traits of controlling behaviour, jealousy and paranoia. She had rejected him. She had to die,’ he said.
‘And were there any residual thought that this was about seeing his son – having left his wife literally in the gutter, bleeding to death, he leaves his son alone.
‘He could so easily have walked away with him. But he knew if he walked away with that pram it would increase his chances of getting caught.
‘But he very quickly got himself out of the area and down to Aylesbury.
‘In the meantime he changed his appearance – shaved his beard, cut his hair, changed his clothing.’
Mr Wood said the marriage between Masum and Ms Akter was ‘an abusive relationship characterised by his jealousy, possessiveness and controlling behaviour with violence being both used and threatened’.
‘He is a man who resorts to violence… and when he resorts to actual violence, it’s with a knife,’ he added.
Earlier, the court heard evidence from Ms Akter’s sister-in-law, who said Masum had stopped his wife wearing make-up and would regularly check her phone to see who she was talking to.
A statement from Minara Begum read in court explained Ms Akter had to ask permission from her husband before going out.
Masum tracked down his estranged wife Kulsuma before he launched ‘ferocious’ and lethal knife attack as she pushed their son in his pram
She said they ‘both seemed happy’ and Masum appeared ‘quite obsessed with’ Ms Akter, who started working at Park Cakes in Oldham.
Ms Begum added: ‘Masum was not too keen on Kulsuma working but she would worry about paying the bills.
‘I told her she could enhance her beauty even more with the right make-up … Masum would get jealous if he saw photos and told her not to do make-up any more, so she didn’t.’
Jurors heard how arguments soon escalated to a ‘more serious level’ before Ms Akter tried to escape, going to stay with her brother and sister-in-law at one point.
Ms Begum said: ‘He kept messaging her telling he was going to do crazy things because she was with us and not at home, and kept asking her where the kitchen knife was.
‘After this happened I told Masum his behaviour was not right and their relationship should not be this way.
‘Masum did not like this coming from a woman or me speaking to him this way. He did not like me very much.’
Jurors heard Ms Akter returned to Masum, but arguments between them ‘got worse after the baby was born’ and Ms Akter ‘always complained he wasn’t helping her with the baby and always expected his food to be prepared after work’.
However, warnings of the explosive nature of the couple’s relationship were seen right at the beginning of their marriage.
Jurors heard that more than a year before he murdered his wife, Masum had told a doctor he ‘felt like he would kill her’.
Floral tributes left outside a shop in Westgate, Bradford, close to where Kulsuma Akter was stabbed to death on April 6, 2024
The trial heard that in August 2022 Masum was found by police at a tram station, where he had stayed all night after an argument with Ms Akter.
He was taken to hospital where he told a doctor ‘I feel like I would kill her’ and said ‘when he fights with her he feels like he is going to kill her’.
Medical notes showed he ‘disclosed thoughts to harm himself and his girlfriend and admitted to carrying a knife while having these thoughts’.
Masum told the trial he had never carried a knife in Ms Akter’s presence.
Asked by his barrister Frida Hussain KC why he had made those comments at the hospital, he replied: ‘I said: ‘I feel I’m having some mental health issues and I would like to share something with the doctor’… I just wanted to share all that with the doctor.’
The defendant, who gave evidence through a Bengali interpreter, told the court the couple had ‘occasional disagreements or arguments’ about when they should live together and she would ‘block him’ when she was angry.
Masum said: ‘I used to feel if I can’t be with her I would die.’
Masum said during the trial he had taken a knife with him on the day he killed Ms Akter because he intended to stab himself if she did not ‘listen to him’.
Mr Wood said the 26-year-old’s threats of self-harm were ’empty threats’, adding: ‘He has never made an attempt on his own life, he has never harmed himself. These are examples of his emotional blackmail.’
He told jurors that during the fatal attack on Ms Akter, Masum put her on the ground, stabbed her ‘many, many’ times, kicked her ‘as a final insult” then took hold of the back of her head and cut her throat.
Mr Wood said: ‘Such a brutal and violent assault by the defendant, culminating in a deliberate cutting of his wife’s throat, only points to an intention to kill. That is what he wanted, that is what he did.’
The IOPC has been investigating Ms Akter’s tragic killing over the prior contact with both the Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire forces.
Masum will be sentenced at a later date.
