News East West
TORONTO: A Pakistani man here, who disguised as a woman by dressing in a burka and women’s shoes to fool security cameras to get entry into his estranged wife’s apartment and strangle her to death in July 2011, was jailed for life by a Toronto court on Wednesday.
Abdul Malik Rustam, 30 now, killed his estranged wife Shaher Bano Shahdady, 21 then, in the early hours of July 22, 2011, for demanding divorce.
Her strangled body was found 15 hours later in her apartment in Scarborough, with her two-year-old son lying by her side.
The victim, who came to Canada from Pakistan with her parents when she was just one year old and grew up in Toronto, went for an arranged marriage with Rustam in Pakistan in 2008.
Rustam joined her in Canada in March 2011. But soon, tensions developed between them as he objected to her having a “cellphone and an online friendship with another man” in Dubai.
Within days, he was thrown out by his wife, only to be reunited in May 2011. But tensions again flared up between them.
Just two weeks before her murder, the victim had walked out and moved into an apartment she received through social assistance.
When Rustam entered her apartment very early in the morning and attacked her on July 22, 2011, she fought back inflicting injuries on him before she was strangled to death by him.
After killing her and leaving the little 2-year-old son with her, this monster went to his in-laws and accompanied his father-in-law to a mosque to offer prayers at 4.30 am.
Later, he told his brother that he has `finished her by throat.’’
Rustam would be eligible for parole only after 16 years.
