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A man who killed his estranged wife in a ferocious attack in Bradford while she was pushing a pram stabbed her numerous times in the head, neck and body, a court has heard.
Habibur Masum, 26, killed Kulsuma Akter after tracking her down to a women’s refuge where she was living. She had moved out after suffering threats and attacks from him at their home in Oldham, a jury at Bradford crown court was told.
Masum, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter in a hearing last week but denied a charge of murder, is accused of stalking, threatening and assaulting Akter over a period of months, eventually stabbing her multiple times outside a shop at about 3pm on Saturday 6 April last year.
Akter, 27, was pushing their seven-month-old baby in a pram near where she had fled “to escape his violence, to escape his jealousy, to escape his controlling behaviour” when she was approached by Masum, said the prosecutor Stephen Wood KC.
In CCTV footage played to jurors, who were warned of its graphic and distressing nature, Masum could be seen approaching and grabbing Akter who was dressed in a black coat and black hijab.
The footage showed Masum brandishing a knife from within his padded jacket and using it to repeatedly stab Akter, as an onlooker screamed.
In the video, Akter fell to the ground and the pram rolled away from her, while Masum stood over her continuing his attack, as the screaming continued.
In court, Masum, wearing a blue T-shirt and grey jacket, left the dock because he did not want to watch the footage of the stabbing.
Wood said Masum was “rational and calculating” that day, and had got on a bus and put his phone on airplane mode to stop it being tracked.
A three-day hunt was subsequently launched and Masum was arrested outside Stoke Mandeville hospital in Buckinghamshire, where he saw doctors for lockjaw.
Jurors were shown CCTV footage of him inside the hospital, with a changed appearance after shaving off his beard and buying new clothes, as a police appeal played on the BBC News channel in the hospital waiting room, in the early hours of 9 April.
The jury was told how Masum had previously threatened to kill Akter and her brothers on a number of occasions.
In an incident in November 2023 while she was on maternity leave from her job in a bakery, police were called after Masum was accused of attacking Akter, which the prosecution described as a “chilling prediction of what he was to do in April of the following year”.
The court heard how he put a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her while she was holding their baby.
The jury was shown an image of Akter with a bruise below her left eye, which he told police she had inflicted on herself.
A social worker had arranged for Akter to be moved to a different refuge, which was due to happen two days after she was killed.
The jury heard that Masum was expected to say he had lost control but these were “fake defences” of a man who could not face up to what he had done, Wood said.
Masum denies stalking, attacking and murdering Akter. The trial continues.
