The Hayats were picture-perfect family building a bright future. But their lives would be torn apart by unimaginable horror at the hands of evil killer Meraj Zafar
EXCLUSIVE:
The Hayats were the model migrant family.
They arrived in Australia from Bangladesh with big dreams of a bright new life Down Under – until it all ended at the hands of an unspeakably evil killer.
Abu Hayat and his wife Mahafuza Akter built a bright future for themselves and their two children in Sydney, with a flourishing butcher shop and a happy family home.
Never-before-seen family portraits chart the milestones in their transition to becoming proud true blue Aussies, including the moment they became citizens.
Eldest daughter Arnima, 19, was the light of her parents’ lives and they burst with pride when she was accepted into medical school to train to become a doctor.
Then she met Meraj Zafar, and everything changed.
None of their lives would ever be the same again – and Abu would regret ever bringing his family to Australia.
Arnima, her sister and their father Abu become Australian citizens (above) when the family was happy and successful before their lives were ruined by her tragic and gruesome murder
Arnima Hayat (above) with the man who would murder her, Meraj Zafar, who had strangled her to the point of unconsciousness at least once before he killed her and immersed her body in acid
Arnima (left with her mother Mahafuza, and right with her little sister) had a happy family life, loved Australia and had a promising future before violent controlling Meraj Zafar murdered her and destroyed her family
Like the teenager she was, Arnima fell head over heels with Zafar, a high school dropout who had transformed from skinny teen to a pumped-up musclebound thug.
She moved in with him. She fell pregnant to him. She even secretly married him. And she became increasingly isolated from her loving family because of him.
But when she finally decided she had to return to the safety of her family fold in January 2022 , savage Zafar murdered her, smothering or strangling her to death.
The exact method will never be known because he then dumped her lifeless body in a bath of acid and dissolved every last bit of her, except one foot.
He was caught on CCTV as he drove to Bunnings, twice, to buy five 20-litre kegs of hydrochloric acid he used to destroy his former lover’s remains so horrifically.
The heartbreak her family had to deal with was unimaginable.
But their torment was only just beginning. In the two years since, they have now lost everything, and endured terrible grief, financial collapse and serious mental trauma.
They lost their thriving Lakemba butcher shop because Arnima’s fearful mother could not stay at home alone, and suffered from PTSD.
At one stage, the once-prosperous family had to rely on government food parcels to survive.
The couple, who are still in their early 40s, have another daughter to support, but Ms Akter told Daily Mail Australia this week that since the murder: ‘Everything is gone.’
Arnima’s father can’t even work at the butcher’s firm he joined after his own shop closed down in the wake of the tragedy, following a serious hand injury.
Mr Hayat says his family is ‘now broken’ and that Arnima’s murder made him regret ever having moved to Australia.
Zafar’s torture of the family has continued even after Arnima’s murder, with the killer refusing to admit his guilt for years until just days before his trial was due to start.
Last week he finally admitted her murder – and an earlier threat to kill her – after dragging out legal proceedings for two years.
Now new details have emerged about the couple’s doomed relationship which was to end so brutally.
Classmates of school dropout Meraj Zafar were astonished to see how the ‘skinny kid’ had massively bulked up since getting expelled. Above Arnima Hayat with Meraj Zafar, who began assaulting her at least 10 months before he killed her
Arnima (above aged about 10) with her parents Abu and Mahafuza in a 2013 photo alongside which someone wrote ‘Happy family, stay happy’
Every parent’s dream
Arnima was a happy young woman, a proud Australian and an aspiring surgeon when she met Zafar, her first boyfriend.
He was a failure, having been expelled from two Sydney high schools and was a drug taker and alcohol drinker who tried to force Arnima to do both, which created conflict when she refused.
Arnima was born in Dakar, Bangladesh in 2003, and by 2006 her father had moved to Australia and begun working to gain his temporary residence visa to bring out his family.
‘When I left her in Bangladesh [and came to Australia], she would call me and say, ‘Dad, when are you going to take me to Australia? Dad, when are we going to Australia?’,’ Mr Hayat said ‘I told her, ‘I will take you very soon’.’
Arnima was nine years old when she arrived with her mother, the young girl quick to learn English and assimilate into Australian life.
As a child, Mr Hayat said, Arnima was every parents’ dream – always ‘very good, very talented and honest, polite and gentle … sometimes naughty and would prank us.
‘However, she had so much love towards us’.
Arnima attended Tempe High School, where she excelled in maths and was popular among her peers. She graduated with an HSC score of 97 and was accepted into the University of Western Sydney faculty of medicine.
Mr Hayat paid his daughter’s uni fees, as well as the $7000 a month rent on his butcher shop which prided itself on its ‘best quality 100 per cent Halal meat’.
Arnima was smart, dedicated to her studies and was on her way to becoming a doctor when she was tragically murdered by her first boyfriend who had estranged her from family
Mera Zafar’s massive arms and chest seemed to have shrunk by the time he appeared in court to plead guilty to stalking Arnima’s father and has a lifetime AVO out against him
In contrast with dropout Meraj Zafar who she wed in a doomed marriage, Arnima (above with her parents after getting an HSC score of 97) was smart, accomplished and working to achieve her aim of becoming a doctor
School dropout expelled twice
The son of a Pakistani-born taxi driver, Zafar attended Malek Fahd Islamic School in the working-class western Sydney suburb of Greenacre.
Arnima got a part-time job working at Kmart in Marrickville Metro shopping centre as a salesperson, two days a week.
She was a normal, sociable teenager until she met Zafar, and began withdrawing from family and friends, the Hayats said.
He was expelled and moved to Belmore Boys High School in 2018, where he repeated Year 11 and was expelled again, never finishing his HSC year.
One former classmate said Zafar’s pumped-up body when he was arrested made him almost unrecognisable from the once slight teenager.
But at a court appearance last year, Zafar appeared to have lost the bulky look he sported in photographs with Armina before her death.
Killer’s deadly threats
In 2021, the builder’s labourer had a fiery argument with Mr Hayat after turning up at the family home on the evening of October 8.
Zafar said he intended to marry Mr Hayat’s then-18-year-old daughter, and Abu requested a meeting with the young man’s parents first.
An argument broke out, and Arnima and her ‘fiancé’ then went to a Hayat family friend and neighbour’s flat.
By the night that Arnima (above with her sister) was murdered by Meraj Zafar she already hated him and was looking to leave the relationship although she was pregnant
At about 8.45pm, Mr Hayat started receiving calls from an unknown number, and on answering the fourth call heard his daughter’s ‘angry’ boyfriend ‘start abusing’ him ‘and making threats of harm’.
Mr Hayat told Daily Mail Australia that this included threatening to kill him.
Zafar said to Mr Hayat: ‘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.
Police charged Zafar with stalking and took out an Apprehended Violence Order on Mr Hayat’s behalf.
Arnima married Zafar in a secret Islamic ceremony in October 2021, and moved into a rented flat on Pennant Hills Road, North Parramatta.
A distraught Mr Hayat would later say the AVO had actually legally prohibited them from repairing their relationship with their daughter or remaining in contact.
Neighbours said they often heard music being played in the ground floor flat where Arnima lived with Meraj and their pet cat.
Abu Hayat, his arm around his younger daughter, at Rookwood Cemetery in February 2022. Arnima’s uncle said the little girl was having trouble understanding that ‘Arnima is no more’
Arnima’s remains inside a green coffin are carried into Rookwood Cemetery just over a week after the teenager’s body was found dissolved in a bath of acid, with only one foot recognisable
Arnima called relatives in the US ‘sounding upset’ in mid-January and told her uncle that he (Zafar) drank alcohol and wanted her to, but she did not want to disrupt her life or her studies.
Pregnant and set to flee
On the night of January 29, 2022, a Saturday, Arnima sent a desperate message to a male friend. She was pregnant and regretted marrying Zafar.
‘I have nobody except you,’ Ms Hayat wrote, with the friend replying, ‘You have got no choice. You have to stay with him.’
In a final message to her friend at 9.10pm, Ms Hayat wrote: ‘No, I hate him.’
These harrowing details only emerged last week, after Zafar made a last-minute confession to the murder as he was due to face trial in the NSW Supreme Court.
The police facts state Zafar arrived back at the flat that night with groceries at 8.15pm.
Within 45 minutes, in the time between Arnima’s final text and Zafar leaving the flat at 9.55pm, he murdered his young wife ‘by applying compression to her neck and/or smothering her’, the facts state.
Zafar later told a friend he had argued with his wife, that their relationship was ‘toxic’ and that she had scratched him before he killed her. He returned to Pennant Hills Road at 1am on January 30.
At 10.24am on the Sunday, Zafar drove his white Mitsubishi Fuso work truck to Bunnings in Northmead, a short 3km drive, and bought a 20-litre keg of hydrochloric acid.
Overcome with grief, Mahafuza Akter collapsed at her daughter’s graveside where she was helped by family and members of Sydney’s Bangladeshi community
The Hayat’s younger daughter watches on after Mahafuza fell to her knees at the graveside of her daughter Arnima, 10 days after the teenager was murdered by Meraj Zafar
Acid bath horror
Back at the flat, Zafar ‘decanted the hydrochloric acid into the bathtub in the unit and moved the body of Ms Hayat into the bathtub … in an attempt to dispose of Ms Hayat’s remains,’ the facts state.
He returned to Bunnings that afternoon and bought four more 20-litre containers of acid and poured them into the bathtub.
The facts reveal that Zafar searched on the internet, ‘Can hydrochloric acid burn through skin?’ and, ‘How many years do you get in Sydney for murder?’
Zafar also called his mother and said that he had fought with his wife, and she was not breathing.
She advised him to ring an ambulance but he refused, saying: ‘The police will get me and they will put me in jail.’
‘The offender also asked his mother how much a ticket to go overseas was,’ the facts state.
Zafar’s mother called emergency services to the unit.
When police forced entry into the apartment, they discovered Ms Hayat ‘lying face down with her face hidden and contorted in half’ with ‘a strong chemical odour in the air which was overwhelming’.
NSW Fire and Rescue officers were forced to wear Hazmat suits to enter the bathroom, finding only one of Arnima’s feet remaining undestroyed.
Zafar had fled the scene.
‘Police evacuated the apartment due to the hazardous quality of air emitting from the enclosed confined bathroom,’ the facts state.
Image of Meraj Zafar in his work truck when he fled the flat where he had placed Arnima’s body into a bath he filled with 100L of hydrochloric acid to dissolve her remains
The window (left) on the bathroom where Arnima’s body was placed in acid, creating such toxic fumes emergency workers had to don hazmat suits to retrieve her remains
Police issued a description of a wanted man ‘175cm-180cm tall, 80kg-90kg with a muscular/athletic build, black hair, a short beard and moustache’.
They said the man ‘may have scratches on his face and arms’.
‘I just killed someone’
According to the facts, while on the run, Zafar told a friend: ‘I married this girl last year, her parents didn’t like me. I married her to have kids.
‘I just killed someone, I swear to God that I killed someone.’ He then laughed.
It has recently emerged that Arnima had previously complained to friends about her husband’s violence, but did not report it to police.
In May 2021, Zafar had put his hands around her neck and she became unconscious, suffering bruising to her throat, chest, left wrist, left arm and thigh.
Two days after killing his wife, Zafar handed himself into police.
At his first case mention at Bankstown Court, his lawyer Mohamad Sakr faced court on his behalf, and said outside to media that his client was ‘distraught’.
No body to bury
Arnima’s family were faced with the awful prospect of burying their daughter, and not even having a proper body to bury.
When the forensics finally released Arnima’s remains, the Hayats had to forego the Bangladeshi funeral tradition where family view their loved one’s face before laying them to rest in the ground.
Mahafuza Akter (above with Arnima) has PTSD and fears being alone since her daughter’s grisly murder from which the family has not recovered
Arnima (above in a photo from her social media account) and (right with her mother and sister) had successfully assimilated into Australian life after emigrating aged nine and had a promising future
With only her foot remaining, Mr Hayat said they would not be able to see their ‘daughter’s beautiful face’ before laying her to rest.
‘I cannot see the last moment of my daughter’s face,’ he said.
Instead, Arnima Hayat’s remains were wrapped in blue cloth and a white shroud to be viewed and touched by family members at a ritual farewell at Lakemba mosque, before her burial at Rookwood Cemetery.
At the invitation of Arnima’s family, Daily Mail Australia recorded the service honouring her life, at which Sydney’s Bangladeshi community spoke of their pride in the young medical student and the bright future which had lain ahead.
Arnima’s shattered mother Mahafuza collapsed by the graveside as she said her last goodbye and had to be held up by relatives as she sobbed, rocking on the spot, in a gut-wrenching display of emotion.
Arnima’s parents, Abu, left, Mahafuza, centre and her uncle Abu Saleh in the family’s flat in the days after her horrific demise at the hand of her first boyfriend, Meraj Zafar
The bathroom where Meraj Zafar placed his young wife into the bath and poured 100L of acid over her before fleeing from the premises in the wake of Arnima Hayat’s grisly murder
Arnima’s uncle Abu Saleh told around 60 mourners: ‘We farewell our beautiful daughter, forever to live in our hearts.’
He said the teenager’s eight-year-old sister was still struggling to take in the horrific death and ‘was not believing that Arnima is no more’.
Courtroom showdown
Two months later, in April 2022, the deeply traumatised couple went to Bankstown court on Friday to face the man accused of murdering their daughter at a hearing set down for the AVO and stalking charge.
It didn’t go ahead because no briefed lawyer turned up to represent Zafar, and the magistrate was forced to adjourn the case for a year, sending Mahafuza into a flood of tears.
‘I cannot wait another year,’ she said as the family agreed to accept government food parcels to survive.
‘They need justice for Arnima, but their suffering interferes with running a business,’ supporter Sultana Akter told Daily Mail Australia.
‘They don’t have enough money to pay the rent. They have had no financial help.’
Last year, Meraj Zafar pleaded guilty to stalking Abu Hayat and received a five-month sentence, as well as a lifelong AVO not to approach Mr Hayat or any of his deceased wife’s family.
He will be sentenced for Arnima Hayat’s murder on August 5.
