A tradie who murdered his pregnant wife then tried to dissolve her body in an acid bath had stalked and threatened her father when he refused to give him permission to marry his teenage daughter.
Meraj Zafar, 22, this week entered a last-minute guilty plea to killing Arnima Hayat, 19, on January 29, 2022, in the North Parramatta unit they shared.
Only one foot of the aspiring doctor was left after Zafar murdered her and then attempted to dissolve her body in a bath of hydrochloric acid.
The facts of the case, tendered to the NSW Supreme Court this week, reveal Zafar killed his young wife ‘by applying compression to her neck and/or smothering her’.
In January 2023, Zafar pleaded guilty to stalking Armina’s father Abu Hayat and threatening him over the phone during a conversation about marriage.
The court heard the apprentice builder had a fiery argument with Mr Hayat after turning up at his home on the evening of October 8, 2021.
Zafar told Mr Hayat he intended to marry his then-18-year-old daughter with the older man requesting to meet the tradie’s parents first.
When an argument broke out, Arnima and her fiancé went to a Hayat family friend and neighbour’s flat, Bankstown Local Court was told in January 2023.
At about 8.45pm, Mr Hayat started receiving calls from an unknown number.
He answered the fourth call and her daughter’s boyfriend was ‘angry and started abusing’ Mr Hayat ‘and making threats of harm’.
The court heard Zafar said to his girlfriend’s father, ‘Are you a man or are you a lady? Why can’t you make a decision? I want a decision quickly.’
Two hours later, Mr Hayat attended Campsie police station, where police told him Zafar had admitted he did swear and abuse the older man over the phone.
Zafar received a five-month sentence, effective immediately, for the stalking charge.
He also received a lifelong AVO not to approach Mr Hayat or any of his wife’s family, including her mother Mahfuza.
The couple were married in a secret Islamic ceremony four months before her death.
Ms Hayat’s parents previously told Daily Mail their daughter was a studious but fun-loving ‘Aussie girl’ who weekly took her parents out for sushi and pies until she ceased contact with them six months ago.
Mahafuzer said her daughter ‘loved movies, music, she liked driving and shopping and buying pretty clothes.’
With plenty of friends from school, her job at Kmart in Marrickville and the University of Western Sydney, she had a happy life before she started going out with Zafar.
Arnima’s parents said she went from being a normal, sociable teenager who regularly told her family how much she loved them to being withdrawn.
From October, 2021 – when Zafar and Arnima moved in together in a unit in Parramatta – the family did not even receive phone calls from her.
She had sent a desperate message to a friend on the night of her death.
‘I have nobody except you,’ Ms Hayat wrote to her friend.
He replied: ‘You have got no choice. You have to stay with him.’
In a final message at 9.10pm, Ms Hayat wrote: ‘No, I hate him.’
Within 45 minutes, she had been murdered by her husband who drove to Bunnings in Northmead to buy a total of 100 litres of hydrochloric acid the following day.
Zafar then poured the acid over Ms Hayat’s body in a bathtub ‘in [an] attempt to dispose of her remains’, the facts of the case state.
It was not the first time Zafar had attacked his wife. In May 2021, he strangled her unconscious after thinking she had been seen with another man.
Zafar will return to court on August 5 for sentencing.