Akmol Miah guilty of 2 murders at Old Bailey. Photo: Met Police
This 14 year-old-old Croydon schoolboy decided to take revenge on the 15-year-old girl who dumped him, googled “how to burn someone’s house down”, set fire to her family home, killing her and her sister, and then used a photograph of the family’s burnt-out house as his computer screensaver.
Akmol Miah, from Broadway Avenue, Croydon, now 15-years-old, has been convicted of double-murder by a jury at the Old Bailey.
Sisters Maleha (left) and Nabiha (right) Masud. Photo: Met Police
On the morning after the fire Miah spoke to journalists at the scene, playing the part of an upset friend and even gave out photographs of Maleha.
Reporting restrictions on Miah’s identity were lifted after the jury’s verdicts on Wednesday (26 May) and the conviction Thursday (27 May) of his 21-year-old cousin, Shihabouddin Choudhury, for being his accomplice. Miah along with Choudhury from Coventry Road, Nottingham will be sentenced July 9.
Shihabouddin Choudhury. Photo: Met Police
They were also both convicted of the attempted murders of the girls’ brothers Zain, 24, and Junaid, 18, and mother Rubina, 55. Junaid is an A-level student at Trinity School in Shirley and hopes to study medicine at university, but his injuries mean he must now wear protective gloves on his hands and he may have to have skin grafts.
The successful prosecution is the result of a painstaking search and compilation of CCTV images that tracked the two arsonists on their return
Scene of arson and murder in Tooting. Photo: Met Police
journey from Croydon to Tooting.
Detective Chief Inspector Damian Allain, from the Homicide and Serious Crime Command of the Metropolitan Police said:
“The Masud family are a loving, hardworking and high achieving family. Words cannot describe what they have suffered at the hands of Miah and Choudhury. This case touched the hearts of all of my team and we were determined to bring those responsible to justice. Today’s verdict is the culmination of meticulous and dedicated detective work, that established that a 14-year-old Akmol Miah, in a premeditated fashion researched how to commit an arson attack on the Internet. He then got Choudray to participate. Choudray then drove down
Maleha Masud. Photo: Met Police
to London from the Midlands in the early hours to collect Miah from his Croydon home to participate in this attack. This crime was despicable in the extreme and I hope that today’s verdict with the Masud family some degree of closure”.
Zain Masud, the 24-year-old brother of the two sisters who were murdered, said:
“This has been a tragic event for the family of enormous magnitude. The verdict was as we expected, however, this does not change the reality of our great loss. We have in effect been given a life sentence without parole and now must live with this.”
