By: Sattwik Biswal
A muslim businesswoman has been spared jail after she stalked and threatened to kill her son and also held a kitchen knife to her own throat when she found that he was seeing a ‘white girl’.
Naveed Raza, 52, from Livingston in West Lothian, Scotland, stalked her pharmacist son Mohsin Raza, 27, after she discovered his relationship with Caralyn Downie, a dispensary assistant – Falkirk Sheriff Court heard.
Mohsin’s relationship with Downie begul while he was living with his mother, who is a director of a property company in Edinburgh, and his 55-year-old father Shahid Raza.
In a Daily Mail report, it states an instance where Raza texted her son and told: “Allah kasam, if you don’t get back tonight I’ll find you and I’ll kill you, I’m not joking. If this thing leaked I’ll kill myself, and I won’t let you live or rest!!!!”
Prosecutor Katie Cunningham told the court: “The family hold Muslim faith and the accompanying cultural traditions. Mohsin began a relationship with Ms Downie in March 2019, and this was to be kept secret from his family.”
Cunningham added when Mohsin realised his mother has become suspicious then he and Downie became “even more careful not to be caught’.
But on July 14, 2019, when Mohsin returned home after meeting Downie. The prosecutor said: “He could see his mother at the window, waiting for him.
“She confronted him and told him the relationship could not continue, and he was ‘bringing shame on the family’.”
When Mohsin refused to end the relationship that is when his mother fetched ‘a large black-handled knife’ from the kitchen.
Cunningham said: “She stood in front of Mohsin and held the knife close to her chest pointing towards her chin.
“She told him he should use the knife on her as this was the only way he’d be allowed to continue the relationship. She went on to say she could not live with the shame of him being in a relationship with a white girl.
“Mohsin was terrified and was praying that his mother would put down the knife. He stood up and placed his hands on her shoulders and pleaded with her not to do anything with the knife.”
After she put the knife down, a ‘visibly upset and frightened’ Mohsin left home to live with Downie and her family in Bonnybridge, Stirlingshire.
Then his mother tried “making him guilty” by sending lot of messages and one of her text mentioned in the Daily Mail report read: “At work, gori (white) don’t care, they’ll talk and talk and that’s gori history. But in our religion it’s completely different, people won’t ever let this go, and your mother would never let your father leave, either.”
One day Mohsin’s parents turned up when he was parked outside Asda in Cumbernauld. Police had to be called with Raza getting arrested.
Solicitor Paul Sweeney, defending, said had spent three nights in police custody and two in Cornton Vale Prison after her arrest in August 2019, and was “deeply embarrassed and ashamed at her behaviour”.
