A PAKISTANI cricketer battered his wife with his own bat and made her drink bleach – but was spared jail after claiming he was joining a top cricket club.
Cricketer Mustafa Bashir leaving Manchester Crown Court, where he pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm against his wife
The case has sparked fury after Judge Richard Mansell said wife Fakhara Karima was not vulnerable as she was “an intelligent woman with a network of friends” and a degree.
Bashir celebrates during Audley v Wood Lane cricket match last year
The 34-year-old played for a local cricket club in Oldham, Greater Manchester.
Manchester Crown Court was told he met wife Fakhara in their native Pakistan and married in 2013.
Their stormy relationship only lasted for two years.
Lawyers for Bashir had claimed he was offered a contract by county cricket champions Leicestershire as a professional player shortly before his arrest on the condition he didn’t go to prison.
But the club denied ever speaking to Bashir or offering him a contract.
A spokesman for Leicestershire County Cricket Club said: “The club are bemused by these stories.
“Any references to Mustafa Bashir signing or being approached to sign for Leicestershire County Cricket Club are completely false.
“The club have never spoken to Mustafa Bashir or an agent, nor offered a contract to the player.”
The club has won the English county championship three times and produced a string of England stars including David Gower, Ray Illingworth and Peter Willey.
The 34-year-old was spared a prison sentence after telling the court he was due to start a new job at Leicestershire cricket club
The cricketer tried turning her against her family and dubbed her friends “English slag girls”.
In April 2014, the couple had been on a day out at Rochdale Lake when a row erupted over Bashir travelling to the Netherlands on a cricket tour.
The thug grabbed his wife by the neck and squeezed until a member of the public threatened to go to the police.
Prosecutor Roger Brown said: “The parties went back home where the argument continued. He grabbed her neck again, so much that she said it was hurting a lot and at one point he picked up a knife and said that he would kill himself and she begged him not to.”
Bashir then dragged his wife to the bathroom and forced her to drink bleach so she would “kill herself”.
The brute also gave her pills to swallow before phoning her family to tell them Fakhara was “not obeying him”.
He also struck Fakhara over her back with his cricket bat because he felt she spent too long talking to a friend on the phone – saying: “If I hit you with this bat with my full power then you would be dead.”
Fakhara eventually went to police and said: “I now feel strong enough to report this to the police. I did fear for my life, he told me he was going to kill me.
But the judge has sparked fury after telling the court Fakhara was neither trapped nor isolated.
He said: “This relationship started well but you began controlling her and how she spent her money.
“You told her how to spend her money and you tried to turn her against her family who you regularly insulted. She would buy clothes that were of a western style which you disapproved of and called her a slag and said her friends were ‘English slag girls’.”
“But I am not convinced she was a vulnerable person. Sometimes women who moved her from their country become trapped in a relationship where they lose their support network of family and friends and cannot speak the language.
“This is not the case. She is plainly an intelligent woman with a network of friends and did go on to graduate university with a 2:1 and a masters – although this has had an ongoing affect on her. She had difficult trusting people now, especially men.”
Bashir bowls at Dan Ball and gets him out during game against Knypersley Cricket Club
Abuse charity Refuge said the comments showed “shocking ignorance”.
Chief executive Sandra Horley blasted: “[The judge’s] comments – that he was not convinced of the victim’s ‘vulnerability’ – show a shocking ignorance around the impact of domestic violence on women.
“What a woman does for a job, her level of education or the number of friends she has makes no difference; for any woman, domestic violence is a devastating crime that has severe and long-lasting impacts.”
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