Noida: Children begged relatives to take mom with them— hours later, she was dead

After witnessing a night of relentless arguments between Asma Khan and her husband Noor-ul-lah Haider, their children were resting in their room on Friday afternoon when tragedy struck. According to police, Haider locked his wife in the bedroom, muffled her screams with a pillow, and bludgeoned her to death with a hammer.

“Dad shouldn’t have done that,” said 19-year-old Samad, Asma’s son and a BTech student at Amity University, as he packed his bag to leave their two-storey home in Noida’s upscale Sector 15.

The children said their parents, married in 2005, had been arguing daily in recent weeks as Haider increasingly accused Asma of having an affair.

“We were in our room on Friday when my sister Inaya went to check on mum around 1pm. She opened the door and found her lying in a pool of blood on the bed. A blood-soaked pillow was nearby,” said Samad.

“She started screaming that mum is dead. I rushed in and found her motionless.”

“My father shouldn’t have done that,” Samad repeated. “He suspected that my mother was in an affair with someone, but that wasn’t true. He killed her.”

He added, “For the past three days, he had been fighting with her, checking her phone and even assaulting her.”

Asma’s brother-in-law, Nadeem, said that his wife Farida and other relatives visited the home that morning and counselled the couple for over five hours.

“Just as they were leaving around 11am, Samad and Inaya pleaded with us to take Asma with us. They were afraid something bad would happen,” he said.

Asma’s mother, Husnara Begum, stayed back in hopes of helping the couple reconcile.

“We didn’t think Haider would kill her so brutally,” Nadeem said.

Police who reached the scene found the bedroom splattered with blood and recovered the murder weapon. The case has been registered at Phase 1 police station.

“We are taking the kids with us,” Nadeem added. “There’s no one else to care for them.”