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Man found guilty of wife’s murder

Met police Suma BegumMet police

Suma Begum was attacked during a video call with her boyfriend

A man who strangled his wife for having an online affair and put her body in a suitcase, which he threw in a river, has been found guilty of murder.

Aminan Rahman, 46, from east London, killed 24-year-old Suma Begum in April 2023, a jury has decided after a one-month trial.

The Old Bailey heard how Rahman filmed himself attacking Ms Begum during a video call with her boyfriend, which was recorded on the recipient’s mobile phone.

Rahman is due to be sentenced on 31 July.

Could have drowned

The court heard that Rahman had “most likely” killed Ms Begum “there and then” at their flat in Tower Hamlets, but had at the very least “incapacitated” her before placing her body in the suitcase and dumping it in the River Lea.

“If not already dead by then, she would have inevitably have drowned,” said prosecutor Jocelyn Ledward.

The suitcase was found 10 days later by a member of the public washed up on the riverbank downstream, still containing the body of Ms Begum.

Rahman pleaded guilty before his trial to a charge of preventing the lawful and decent burial of her body.

Ms Begum had undergone an Islamic marriage over the telephone in 2019 when Rahman was in London and she was in Bangladesh, the court heard.

They had first lived in Somerset as husband and wife, where Rahman worked as a chef, before moving to east London in April 2023 where they stayed at a flat in the Docklands with their two children.

Ms Begum had started an “intimate” online relationship with a man her own age, Shanin Miah, who was living in the United Arab Emirates, and they “hoped in due course to be together”, said Ms Ledward.