Sanam Navsarka 'torture cupboard' gives me shudders

Feb 12 2009 by Neil Atkinson, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Cupboard at Howley Walk

THE current occupant of Sanam Navsarka’s first home still shudders when she walks past a tiny cupboard.

It was used to imprison the little girl.

Victoria Roberts revealed how she feels uneasy at the thought of the baby girl being locked up by her mother’s sadistic partner.

At the start of the trial, prosecutor Julian Goose told the jury about the cupboard, in the hallway of  the house on Howley Walk, where Sanam lived with Zahbeena Navsarka and later Anwar before they moved to Riddings Road in Deighton.

He said: “There was a cupboard with no internal light and a door that could be secured to prevent a two-year-old child from escaping. Mr Anwar used the cupboard as a way of punishing Sanam. From time to time he put her inside her cupboard, closing the door and leaving her there in darkness. Sanam was frightened of the dark. Placing Sanam in the cupboard upset her.”

Tiny handprints and bloodstains were found inside a cupboard in the hallway of the flat after Sanam’s death in May last year.

Examiner photographer Peter Cottle took these exclusive pictures.