Murder accused was 'smiling killer', trial told

A man who stabbed his wife to death as she pushed their baby son in a pram has been described to a jury as the "smiling killer".

Habibur Masum stabbed Kulsuma Akter, 27, more than 25 times after confronting her in Bradford in April 2024.

Giving his closing speech to jurors, prosecutor Mr Stephen Wood KC said Mr Masum was captured on CCTV smiling as he boarded a bus after the attack.

Mr Masum, 26, of Leamington Avenue, Burnley, has pleaded guilty to manslaughter and possession of a bladed article, but has denied a charge of murder.

Mr Wood told the court that a close-up of Mr Masum getting on the bus showed him smiling, which, he said, "removed all possible doubt" about his state of mind.

"There were no tears, there was no distress," he said. "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."

He said there was no dispute Mr Masum had killed his wife but that he now relied on the partial defences of "diminished responsibility and a loss of control".

He told the court that although Mr Masum was suffering from depression at the time, that did not provide an explanation for the killing.

"The only person Habibur Masum feels sorry for is himself and the predicament he finds himself in," he said.

He told jurors that during the fatal attack Mr Masum had stabbed his wife "many, many" times before he slit her throat.

He 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 court was told that after the attack Mr Masum "very quickly" left the area, travelling to Aylesbury and changing his appearance by shaving his beard and cutting his hair.

The prosecution said these were not features of a mental abnormality, but "unequivocally point to planning, calculation, cunning and, ultimately, pre-meditated murder."

In her closing speech to jurors, Frida Hussain KC, defending Mr Masum, said he had not taken a knife with him that day to use it on Ms Akter.

She said: "He took it because he was in such a depressed state he wanted to use it on himself, should he not be able to persuade her."

Ms Hussain said Mr Masum's evidence was that Ms Akter had told him there would be no lack of people to replace him as a father to their son.

She told jurors: "It was that comment and the gravity of it to him, in his depressed state, that there would be no shortage of fathers for his son, that made him lose it, lose his control."

The trial continues.

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