A Pakistani cricketer who hit his wife with his bat and made her drink bleach escaped jail as the judge said he was not convinced the victim was vulnerable and thus paved the way for the cricketer to play for a top club. Mustafa Bashir also slapped and choked his wife and ridiculed her for wearing western clothing and called her friends as "English slag girls".
Bashir's lawyer claimed in court that the 34-year-old would sign a contract with former county cricket champions Leicestershire as a professional player after being offered a contract shortly before his arrest. However, a spokesman for the club denied those claims, saying it has never spoken to Bashir or his agent, or offered him a contract.
Manchester Crown Court heard how Bashir and Fakhara Karim met in their native Pakistan and married in 2013, but he controlled her and how she spent her money. During the stormy marriage he struck his wife Karim over her back with his cricket bat because he felt she spent too long talking to a friend on the phone.
The incident occurred at their home on New Year's Eve in 2014, with Bashir snatching his wife's phone and telling her he would search it to look at her messages. The cricketer also tried to force his wife to drink bleach and take tablets. Bashir, who plays for a local cricket league in Oldham, Greater Manchester, grabbed his wife by the neck and squeezed until a member of the public intervened, the court heard. One day he took her to the bathroom where he grabbed a bottle of bleach and made her drink the bleach so she would kill herself. She spat that out as she was unable to swallow it. "Then he gave her tablets from the house and told her to take them. She did but again she was unable to swallow them.
Judge Richard Mansell QC said he didn’t believe the victim was vulnerable as she was "an intelligent woman with a network of friends" and had a college degree. Passing an 18 month jail term suspended for two years, Judge Mansell QC ordered Bashir to attend a workshop entitled "building better relationships" and pay £1,000 costs, and banned him from contacting Karim indefinitely under the terms of a restraining order.
