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Mechanic gets life sentence for killing 'twin evils'

A P Kamath in Toronto

As Zafar Ullah starts a life sentence in a jail near Toronto for strangulating his wife and son, it is not just his crime the South Asian community here is discussing but how much of a risk an abused woman could take.

"Many of the women in our community suffer too much without telling anyone or going to a social worker or a shelter for women," says Sheetal Bajwa, a store owner. "Whether we are from India or Pakistan, it is ingrained in us that we should not take our domestic problems to an outsider, especially to someone in authority. But at what cost?"

Three weeks before 28-year-old Nabeela Ullah and 3-year-old Ahsan were killed in 1997 and their bodies were stuffed in a freezer in the basement of the family house, she had returned to her husband from Pakistan. She wanted her three children to have a father, she had said. Privately, she had also told her relatives in Toronto that rumors in the family in Karachi and Islamabad that she was an unwanted and faithless wife had also worried her.

But the 33-year-old mechanist could not trust her insistence that she had been faithful to him. On one hand he wanted her to be with him but he would also be tormented by doubts, officials say.

"She put the interests of her children above her own safety, and she paid for that devotion with her own life," Justice Bruce Durno said recently as he sentenced Ullah to life imprisonment. Pakistan born Ullah will not be eligible for parole for 15 years -- in most cases, lifers could apply for parole after 10 years.

The judge also reminded Ullah: "You killed Ahsan because you thought he was not your child. DNA tests proved that you murdered your own son."

Though Ullah had confessed the murders to his brother, calling his wife and son "twin evils," he pleaded guilty only after viewing a video tape the Canadian police had made in Birmingham in England. In that tape his eldest son, 8, who is being raised by family members, talked about their dead mother and brother. He had reportedly witnessed the strangulation.

Prosecutor Paul Taylor told the court that Nabeela Ullah had told some of her relatives that Ullah was consumed by jealousy and constantly thought she was having affairs. But she also believed him when he swore on the Koran that he would change.

Sami Ullah, Zafar's own brother, had called the police in May 1996 after Nabeela was beaten by her husband but the case did not go to the court because Zafar Ullah brought tickets to send his wife and their two youngest children to Pakistan. The case was dropped because the officials believed that Nabeela was not going to return from Pakistan.

A few weeks later, Zafar Ullah went to Pakistan and brought his wife and children back to Toronto.

Nabeela, who had lost her father when she was a child, thought "it was best for her children that they have a father," prosecutor Taylor said.

But Ullah continued abusing her, and in instance when the police were called by the neighbors, Nabeela who had been injured told the officers that she had fallen down the stairs. She told the relatives another story: She had lied to the police because Ullah had promised -- again swearing on the Koran -- that he would let her go to her brother near Frankfurt in Germany.

But as she was getting ready to leave, Ullah struck her and strangled her; then he strangled Ahsan who was sleeping. He took his other children to a park, and told the relatives that Nableela and Ahsan had gone to visit their relatives near Chicago.

The bodies were found three weeks later when Nabeela's relatives called the police anonymously, telling them that it was unusual for her not to have returned from Chicago.

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