A man on trial, has denied murdering his pregnant wife by pushing her off Edinburgh landmark ‘Arthur’s Seat’.
Kashif Anwar stands accused of behaving in a threatening and abusive way towards his Master’s law graduate wife, Fawziyah Javed, from Leeds, on 1st September 2021 at a hotel in the Scottish capital, and then of murdering her the next day by pushing her from the hill in Holyrood Park, causing her multiple blunt force injuries.
The High Court in Edinburgh was told this caused the death of the 31-year-old, from Pudsey, and that of her unborn child. Anwar, 29, denies both the charges against him.
The jury was told the Crown case, will lead with evidence which includes altercations between the couple, and allegations that Anwar had knocked his wife unconscious in a cemetery in Pudsey between 11th March and 14th March 2021.
The prosecution said the defendant, had on 12th March 2021 withdrawn £12,000 from his wife’s bank account and put it into his own account without her consent.
The jury was also told that Anwar is said to have put a pillow over his wife’s face, restricting her breathing, and repeatedly punched her on her head. This is alleged to have happened between in March 2021.
Also among the prosecution claims is that on 26th August 2010 in Owlcotes Road, Pudsey, and elsewhere, he made threats that he would not allow his wife to divorce him, that he would not divorce her, and that he would not allow her to remarry.
The court was also told of a claim that between 29th April and 1st May 2021, Anwar made threats that he would “ruin her life should she end the relationship”.
The couple had married in married in December 2019.
On 31st August 2021 Fawziyah and her husband had checked into Edinburgh’s Residence Inn by Marriott, in Simpson Loan, where they stayed in room 108. They had been set to check-out on 4th September.
Ms Javed died on 2nd September, and a post-mortem examination revealed the cause of death to be complications of multiple injuries cased by a fall from height.
The charge against Anwar states that on 1st September 2021 at the Residence Inn, he did behave in a threatening or abusive manner which was likely to cause a reasonable person to suffer fear of alarm and that he did repeatedly shout at his wife.
He is also accused of on 2nd September, at Arthur’s Seat, a landmark site in Holyrood Park, assaulting his then pregnant wife, and pushing her from a height and causing her to fall, whereby she sustained multiple blunt force trauma injuries and was so severely injured she died there and that he therefore murdered her.
The second charge added he caused the death of the unborn child, and that he did previously evince malice and ill-will towards her.
The trial is expected to continue until 14th April.
