Wife murder husband is jailed

An illegal immigrant was today sentenced to life after being found guilty of murdering his wife at their Darlaston home and then hiding her body.

The body of former Wednesbury schoolgirl Laily Begum, aged 21, has never been found despite numerous police searches at locations including a landfill site in Cannock.

Kafil Ahmed was told he must serve at least 20 years. A jury of four men and eight women took just three hours to convict the 32-year-old.

Ahmed had denied deliberately killing the mother of his four-year-old daughter and stood motionless as the verdict was read out at Birmingham Crown Court.

Judge Frank Chapman, who said Ahmed had been living in England illegally for 11 years, sentenced the Bangladeshi man today, following the guilty verdict yesterday.

The five-day trial heard Ahmed had hit his wife, a former pupil at Wednesbury's Wood Green High School, repeatedly with a blunt knife at their home, in Simmonds Place, in January last year.

Blood was found on the walls and ceiling of the living room and in the kitchen. The hearing heard there had been disagreements over money and Ahmed had accused his wife of having an affair.

Judge Chapman said: "You had no reason to suspect her faithfulness to you and I think it arose because she was generous in nature and popular with everyone."

Ahmed claimed he accidentally killed his wife as he tried to stop her attacking him with a knife. He said the knife caught her neck during the struggle.

He claimed he panicked and put her body in his car and dumped it in a rubbish bin outside Balti Palace in Wednesbury, where he worked, before driving to Digbeth coach station, where he abandoned his car.

Judge Chapman said he would not order that Ahmed be deported after his sentence because he would have left Bangladesh for more than 30 years by then.

By Lyndsey Hunt