A pizza restaurant owner who killed his business partner and enlisted the help of three Bradford men to dismember the body and dispose of it in the city has been jailed for life.

Cheating businessman Ali Shah, 32, showed no emotion as he went to the cell at the Old Bailey for the murder of 22-year-old Rasminkant Patel.

His cousin Asghar Shah - a brilliant A Level student from East Bowling, Bradford - helped in the gruesome disposal of the corpse.

He was convicted of perverting the course of justice and, wobbling on his feet, had to be held up by dock officers as he was sentenced to 15 months in a Young Offenders Institute.

Sentencing Asghar, whom the jury found guilty by a majority of 10 to 2, Mr Justice Blofeld told him: "You are a highly intelligent young man but with a nasty streak that sometimes comes to fore.

"If you were older I would be sentencing you to a longer term. In view of my finding that Ali Shah was mastermind and ringleader of the affair...I am prepared to be more merciful. In the interests of justice you have suffered enough."

Asghar, of Barnard Road, has been in custody since last November and is expected to be released in the next few days. His identical twin, Akbar, was acquitted of perverting the course of justice and sobbed hysterically amid the harrowing court scenes.

Two 18 year-old hitmen from Bradford were allegedly recruited to help Shah with the killing. They have since fled the country and there is insufficient evidence to charge them.

Rasmikant Patel - known to his friends as Raz - shared the franchise of the Pizza Perfect restaurant in Lewisham with Ali Shah. A summer of continual rows over their failing business came to a head on October 27 last year when Ali and two other men came from Bradford to visit the shop.

It is thought Raz was stabbed and beaten with an iron bar, but the trial heard the body was too mangled to be sure.

Shah spread tomato puree over the floors of the takeaway to hide the tell-tale signs of his victim's blood. Raz's lifeless body was then put in a wheelie bin and driven up to Bradford to be dismembered and burned.

Ali enlisted the help of his cousin - then 17 - to assist in the gruesome task of attempting to dispose of the body by burning it in another bin and when that failed, dismembering and disposing of it at various sites around Bradford. The body was cut up using a meat cleaver, hammer and chisel. Despite a lengthy police search on wasteground around East Bowling the hands, head and feet have never been recovered.

Sentencing Ali Shah, of Walthamstow, East London, Mr Justice Blowfeld said: "It was a terrible and revolting disposal of the body.

"There is only one sentence I can pass on you and that is life."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.