A shopkeeper who murdered his four-month pregnant wife and then dumped her body in an acid bath has been sentenced to a minimum of 16 years.
Meraj Zafar, 23, killed Arnima Hayat, 19, in their apartment in North Parramatta, western Sydney, as she attempted to end their turbulent marriage in January 2022.
Hayat, a medical sciences student, wanted to leave Zafar amid what a judge called his “controlling and violent behavior.”
Judge Deborah Sweeney jailed Zafar for a maximum of 21 years and six months during a sentencing hearing in the NSW Supreme Court on Thursday.
It was never established precisely how Ms Hayat was murdered, but Zafar took her own life by “applying compression to her neck and/or suffocating her” before placing her body in a bath of hydrochloric acid.
Judge Sweeney said Hayat’s body was so decomposed that the aspiring doctor could only be identified through DNA samples.
His mother, Mahafuza Akter, burst into tears in court during the sentencing, Nine newspaper reported.
Ms Hayat’s family emigrated to Australia from Bangladesh when she was a child and established a successful butcher shop.
Meraj Zafar killed Arnima Hayat, 19, in her North Parramatta apartment in January 2022 as he faced the prospect of her ending their turbulent marriage.
Father Abu Hayat and Mrs Akter became citizens and their eldest daughter seemed to have a promising future in medicine until Zafar, her first boyfriend, came into her life.
Hayat was studying at Western Sydney University when she fell in love with Zafar, a drug addict who had transformed from a skinny teenager to a muscular thug.
Her parents previously told Daily Mail Australia that their daughter was a studious but fun-loving “Australian girl” who “loved movies, music, liked driving, shopping and buying nice clothes.”
Once she was in a relationship with Zafar, Hayat went from being a normal, sociable teenager who regularly told her family how much she loved them to being withdrawn.
The couple married in October 2021 but the union had already been marked by violence.
Police issued a stopped violence order protecting Hayat in May 2021 after an enraged Zafar put his hands around her neck, believing she had been seen with another man.
Zafar had also harassed and threatened Hayat over the phone when he refused to give him permission to marry his teenage daughter.
The construction apprentice got into a heated argument with Mr Hayat after showing up at his house on the night of October 8, 2021.
Meraj Zafar murdered Arnima Hayat in her North Parramatta apartment as he faced the prospect of her ending their turbulent relationship.
Zafar had told Hayat that he intended to marry off his then 18-year-old daughter, and the older man requested to meet the tradie’s parents first.
When an argument broke out, the young couple went to the apartment of a friend and neighbor of the Hayat family.
At around 8:45 p.m., Hayat began receiving calls from an unknown number.
She answered the fourth call and her daughter’s boyfriend was “angry and started abusing” Mr. Hayat “and threatening to harm him.”
A court heard Zafar tell his girlfriend’s father: ‘Are you a man or are you a lady? Why can’t you make a decision? I want a quick decision.’
Two hours later, Hayat went to Campsie police station, where officers told him that Zafar had admitted to abusing the older man over the phone.
Since October 2021, when Zafar and Hayat moved in together, the family has not even received phone calls from her.
She had sent a desperate message to a friend on the night of her death.
“I have no one but you,” Hayat wrote to her friend.
He replied: ‘You have no choice. You have to stay with him.
In a final message at 9:10 p.m., Mrs. Hayat wrote: “No, I hate him.”
Hayat’s parents, Abu Hayat (left) and Mahafuza Akter (right), delivered heartbreaking victim impact statements before their daughter’s killer was sentenced.
Within 45 minutes, her husband murdered her and drove to Bunnings, in Northmead, the next day to buy 100 liters of hydrochloric acid.
Mr Zafar then poured acid over Ms Hayat’s body in a bathtub “in an attempt to dispose of her remains”, according to the facts of the case.
Facts reveal that Zafar searched on the Internet: “Can hydrochloric acid burn skin?” and ‘How many years do you get in Sydney for murder?’
Zafar also called his mother and told her that he had fought with his wife and she was not breathing.
She advised him to call an ambulance, but he refused, saying: “The police will catch me and they will put me in jail.”
“The criminal also asked his mother how much a ticket to travel abroad cost,” the facts show.
Zafar’s mother called emergency services to the unit.
When the police forced their way into the apartment, they discovered Ms. Hayat “lying face down with her face hidden and contorted in the middle” with “a strong chemical smell in the air that was overwhelming.”
Mourners carry Arnima Hayat’s coffin to her grave in the Muslim section of Rookwood Cemetery on February 8, 2022.
NSW Fire and Rescue officers were forced to wear protective suits to enter the bathroom and found only one of Ms Hayat’s feet was left intact.
Zafar fled the scene but two days later he surrendered to the police.
According to the facts, while fleeing, Zafar told a friend: ‘I married this girl last year, her parents don’t like me. I married her to have children.
Last month, Hayat’s father addressed the killer directly in court.
“You killed my daughter, you destroyed her future… you destroyed my family, you destroyed my heart,” Hayat told Zafar. “We lost our daughter and everything else.”
At the same hearing, Mr Zafar apologized to Ms Hayat’s parents without using his daughter’s name, referring to her only as “my wife”.
Crown prosecutor Fiona Gray had claimed Zafar’s inability to recognize Ms Hayat’s value outside of her connection to him reflected his “possessive and controlling” behavior throughout their relationship.
Hayat said she was unable to see her daughter one last time because the hydrochloric acid had destroyed her body.
Zafar told Mr. Hayat that he was marrying his 18-year-old daughter (pictured at her graduation photo) and became angry when he did not receive the older man’s blessing.
“It burned the face he used to talk to every night, it burned her,” Hayat said. ‘Can you imagine someone burning your child?
“He burned her and I will never be able to see her again.”
Hayat’s mother recalled the day her life fell apart in a statement read by a Homicide Victim Support Group volunteer.
“My tears never end and the deep pain in my heart never stops, never stops, never stops,” her statement read.
‘I cry day and night because they stole it from me.
Crying as her words were read, Ms Akter described Ms Hayat as a beautiful daughter and a dedicated student who would have been a “wonderful, fun mother”.
“The dreams we shared for her future were everything a mother could want, and losing that dream has left a void that can never be filled,” Mrs. Akter had written about her daughter.
‘What happens to her dreams now that she has been murdered, the dreams we built together? Moving to Australia was supposed to be the beginning of our dreams, not the end.’
Arnima Hayat lived in this ground floor apartment for three months before she was murdered in January 2022.
Akter said her daughter had been murdered by the person who was supposed to love and “protect” her and that she would “give anything to see his face one last time.”
“Instead, I sit by his grave every Friday stroking the grass because I can’t stroke his hair anymore. I kiss and hug his headstone, wanting to hold it and smell it.”
Hayat had married Zafar in a secret ceremony against her family’s wishes and just four months later she was dead.
“Please come home, Amy,” her mother pleaded. ‘Please. I wish I could wake up from this nightmare and see you home.
‘I don’t know how I ended up in this nightmare and everything went so wrong, but I knew he wasn’t a good man.
Meraj Zafar was filmed in his work truck fleeing the flat where he had placed Arnima’s body in a bathtub which he filled with 100 liters of hydrochloric acid to dissolve her remains.
“She was murdered by the person who was supposed to love her, murdered by the person who was supposed to respect her, by the person who was supposed to protect her, the person who was supposed to father her child and start a family with her, by the person who was supposed to make all your dreams come true.
“She should be at home helping me make dinner… and putting on her makeup, studying for her end of semester exams, drinking tea and chatting with her father… she should be at home.”
Having completed the grieving mother’s statement, Judge Sweeney told her: ‘Mrs Akter, I am sorry for the loss of your beautiful daughter. You have my sympathy.
In a letter to the court and his victim’s family, Zafar said he took full responsibility for his actions.
“I don’t know how to begin to say how sorry I am for everything I have caused and everything I have affected through my actions,” he wrote in the letter read aloud in court.
“It’s the most terrible thing you can do to another person.”
The killer said that no one should be treated with violence or “discarded” as Ms. Hayat had been.
“I hope one day you can forgive me,” he said. ‘Very sorry.’
Zafar will be eligible for parole in March 2038.