With her final words, a pregnant woman who had been forced from Arthur’s Seat by her husband contributed to her murderer’s imprisonment.
In September 2021, Fawziyah Javed, 31, and her pregnant child perished in Edinburgh after Kashif Anwar pushed her off the cliff.
While Anwar, 29, denied murder, he was found guilty in April of last year.
As she lay badly injured in the street, a bystander heard some of her final words, which included, “Don’t let my husband near me, he pushed me.”
Fawziyah, a lawyer, gathered proof of Anwar’s abusive behaviour towards her in the months before the murder. She even put up a secret code with her mother to SMS the police if she ever needed assistance.
Nighat Yasmin Javed, Fawziyah’s mother, stated that she became increasingly worried for her daughter’s safety following the couple’s December 2020 marriage due to the “abuse, the violence, the aggression, and coercive control.” She advised her daughter to text her with the message “I feel like cream cakes” if she felt threatened.
A two-part Channel 4 documentary has since revealed ‘a great deal of evidence’ collected by Fawziyah made up the ‘pillar’ of the prosecution case and was ‘crucial’ in securing the murder conviction.
The documentary, called The Push, was given permission to film the trial at the High Court in Edinburgh.
Alex Prentice KC, lead prosecutor, said she had secretly recorded phone calls of Anwar threatening her, and she went to police twice to record his abusive behaviour.
The second report, tragically, was made just days before the couple, from Leeds, went on their weekend trip to Edinburgh when Anwar struck.
Mr Prentice added: ‘The evidence of what Fawziyah said was crucial. It was effectively Fawziyah speaking to the jury.
‘I have prosecuted many murder cases over the course of my career but for a variety of reasons this case is extraordinary.’
He added that it would have been ‘very difficult’ to find Anwar guilty without that evidence.
Leave a Reply