A FEMALE voice said “lock the door” as a man accused of murder arrived at a house, a court has heard.
Mohammed Taroos Khan, 52, of Thornbury Road, Bradford, faces a charge of murder after the body of his niece Somaiya Begum, 20, of Binnie Street, Barkerend, Bradford was found on July 6 last year.
The 52-year-old denies unlawfully killing Miss Begum on, or around, June 25 last year but has admitted to disposing of her body.
Khan - who was banned from attending the address where Miss Begum lived with her grandma and another uncle due to a restraining order in relation to assaulting his daughter, who also stayed there for a time - visited the house in Binnie Street several times on June 25.
The court revisited CCTV footage, which includes audio, from a house three doors up on the terrace yesterday where Khan’s silver Mitsubishi Space Wagon is seen parking up on the street at around 3.22pm.
The prosecution say an argument or conversation can be heard on the clip before Khan leaves to have a key cut at the Timpson store in Morrisons, Thornbury.
Khan then returns to Binnie Street at 3.50pm and Police Staff Investigator (PSI) James Malsbury said on Tuesday he could hear a female voice from the audio of the CCTV clip say “he wants the diary”.
He added that seconds later the same female voice said “lock the door”.
PSI Malsbury gave evidence in court on Tuesday and explained he had worked on the case from the beginning and was tasked with listening to audio clips attached to these two pieces of CCTV footage.
He said 42 seconds into the first clip, a male voice can be heard saying “get back” before saying “I’m making legal”, with the rest indiscernible and then two seconds later, “get the f**k out of my face”.
The same male voice says “I’m coming back” 15 seconds later, before there is the sound of running footsteps, according to PSI Malsbury.
He said moments later the male says “come back, come here”, which is overlapped by the female voice from the second clip saying “nah, I’m not going”.
The defence questioned PSI Malsbury’s ability to distinguish different voices and suggested due to the pitch of one of the transcribed comments that it could even be a child and there could be an “unlimited” number of speakers due to numerous people appearing in the street.
Karen Robinson, junior counsel for the defence, also put it that the camera itself did not capture footage of Miss Begum’s home in Binnie Street and that the recordings were of “unreasonably poor quality”.
PSI Malsbury said he had no qualifications in speech science, or voice comparison and recognition, and added he did not have details of the camera’s audio range.
But he disagreed there were an unlimited number of speakers.
The Honourable Justice Neil Garnham said to the jury: “It is your function to decide what they say, the gentlemen in the witness box has had the benefit of listening to this 20 times, in better conditions.”
He added: “But it's your job to make a decision about this, not his, he is here to help you.”
The jury also heard through agreed facts read out by Tom Storey, junior counsel for the prosecution, that Khan last had contact with his brother and Miss Begum’s dad, Mohammed Yaseen Khan, on May 13 last year, prior to June 26, 2022.
Miss Begum’s father left the country on a one-way ticket to Pakistan on January 8 this year, after entering an Islamic divorce with his wife, the court heard.
The trial continues.
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