A POSSESSIVE lover murdered his former beauty student girlfriend because he didn’t want her to be free, a court heard.

The body of Greenhead woman Sabira Alam was found dumped on bleak moorland in April this year.

Former boyfriend Naveed Naeem is alleged to have strangled the 20-year-old after she broke up with him because she could no longer cope with his jealous and obsessive behaviour.

Her body was discovered in a dry gully at Buckstones, Scammonden, by a dog walker on April 5, days after family reported her missing.

Yesterday the trial of 30-year-old Naeem began at Bradford Crown Court.

Naeem, of New Street, Milnsbridge, denies the murder charge.

Opening the case for the prosecution, Rodney Jameson QC, said:

“He was a jealous lover whose obsessive and sometimes violent behaviour was driving her away – but he killed her rather than let her go.”

The court was told that prior to her death Sabira, who lived with her family at Vernon Avenue, Greenhead, had been dating Naeem for 18 months.

She had not told her parents about the relationship as they would not have approved, but her siblings were aware that the couple were seeing each other.

But by April this year their relationship had been in trouble for some time, a jury heard, as Naeem became increasingly possessive and jealous.

The jury heard extracts from Naeem’s diary, where he described his fears that Sabira – whom he nicknamed ‘Bambi’ – was cheating on him.

But this fear, Mr Jameson told the court, was ‘totally unfounded and irrational’.

He said that other obsessive acts by Naeem led to the couple’s relationship breaking down in the weeks leading up to Sabira’s death.

He said: “She told her sisters and best friend that his behaviour was responsible for her losing her job at Textile House in Huddersfield where he would come to see her.

“When he got into a mood she would become very stressed, but when they were apart she returned to being a fun, happy and loving sister.

“By 2009 she was becoming fed up with his behaviour – he would ring her and demand that her pet cockatoo was put on the phone to prove she was at home.

“His possessiveness and paranoia was scaring her.”

The jury was told that Naeem once hit his girlfriend, a former Salendine Nook High School pupil, in the middle of a busy supermarket.

Sabira, who had attended the White Rose Beauty School in Leeds, decided to end the relationship.

But the jury was told that she was still seeing her ex as a ‘friend’ and the couple would phone and text each other up to 90 times a day.

On March 31, the couple spent the night together at Sabira’s family home and the following evening Naeem picked her up in his mother’s VW Polo to take her to the cinema.

The couple were captured on CCTV at Tesco petrol station in Huddersfield just after 10pm on April 1 – the last time Sabira was seen alive.

Mr Jameson told the jury that Naeem claimed that at the cinema he and his ex had a row and they drove around for a while, first around Leeds and then back to Huddersfield on the M62.

Naeem claimed that the couple had then argued about him going to visit his aunt in Manchester and she was in a bad mood when he dropped her back off at home at 1am.

The jury heard that he drove around for a while before returning home at 4am.

But Mr Jameson told the jury that Naeem was seen on camera driving north on the M1 at 4.38am and didn’t actually arrive home until 6am.

He is alleged to have killed Sabira between the last time she was seen alive and this time.

Sabira’s worried family reported her missing the next day, but her body wasn’t found until four days after she was killed.

A post mortem revealed Sabira had been strangled. She had also been gagged and her hands were tied, the binds cut free after she was killed.

The jury was told that the day after Naeem is alleged to have killed Sabira, he drove to Hull where he emptied his former lover’s account.

He drove to Manchester late that evening to see his aunt, but visited a prostitute using her cash.

He was arrested for Sabira’s murder when her body was found.

The court was told that fibres found on the material used to strangle and tie Sabira matched those found on Naeem’s clothes.

Her blood was also found in his car, together with a pair of scissors also containing the fibres found on her body.

Mr Jameson said: “We don’t know when he killed her or took her body and concealed it on the moors.

“But what we do know with absolute certainty is that it was he who killed her and no one else.”

The case continues.