THIS is the first picture of the man accused of murdering Accrington mum-of-six Zainab Begum.
Muhammed Arshad, 37, was yesterday awaiting the jury's verdict after a sensational two-week trial. The judge was completing her summing-up at Preston Crown Court as the Observer went to press.
Arshad, of Crumpsall, Manchester, has admitted cutting up his mother-in-law's body into "nine pieces" after dissolving it in caustic soda and vinegar and transferring her remains to the Millennium takeway in Church Street, Accrington, which he ran with his brother Mohammed Khan.
But he denies killing her, claiming she died after hitting her head on a bedroom wall when he rejected her sexual advances.
During her summing-up, the judge, Dame Heather Steel, referred to a semen-stained duvet in Mrs Begum's Burnley Road home. Arshad claimed it got there during sex with his wife Kalsoom Begum. But she denied sleeping with Arshad on the duvet.
In his summing-up, prosecutor Mr David Turner QC said it was a cold-blooded murder that was premeditated and motivated by greed.
He claimed Arshad wanted to sell Mrs Begum's terraced house and use the proceeds to buy a takeaway. With her dead, the "balance of power" in the family would change.
He alleged Arshad's defence was "utterly ridiculous" and what really happened was so horrific that her body needed to be "obliterated".
The prosecutor said Arshad had robbed Mrs Begum of her life, had robbed her children of her body and was now trying to rob her of her reputation in a desperate effort to save himself.
He said Arshad, who arrived in Britain in 2002, had lied during police interviews, repeatedly changing his story.
Up until the day of the trial he maintained Mrs Begum had been abducted by four masked men who were holding her to a £50,000 ransom.
But Mr Mukhtar Hussain QC, defending, said the charge of murder was nothing to do with the treatment of Mrs Begum's dead body, no matter how gruesome or grisly. He said: "What happened in that bedroom can only have been a spontaneous act."
Khan, also 37, of the same address, denies helping dispose of her remains, which have never been found. Khan, who was also married to one of Mrs Begum's daughters, allegedly confessed his involvement to police.
But his barrister, Mr Benjamin Myers, claimed an interpreter had "prompted" Khan and that he was physically and mentally unstable.
He said: "He had been very depressed in the preceding months, exhibiting unusual behaviour and being very pre-occupied. He wasn't well at the end of 2003."
He added that Khan was "worried sick" about his business, which was to be imminently inspected by environmental health officers.
Earlier in the trial pizza delivery boy Irfan Ahmed told the court he was ordered to scrub the back yard with industrial degreaser and Arshad and Khan cleaned inside until 8am the next day.
Police found traces of Mrs Begum's blood behind the first floor bar and inside the kitchen, but they have refused to believe Arshad's story that he then transferred the remains to his home in Crumpsall, took them in bags on the bus and dumped them in industrial bins behind Indian takeaways in Rus-holme, Manchester.
Arshad this week told the court he would help search landfill sites to prove his story was true.
