Celine Dookhran murder trial: Builder told undercover officer 'girls deserve rape', court hears

A builder accused of raping and cutting the throats of two women, had previously offered one of them up for sex online, a court has heard.

Mujahid Arshid, 33, and his employee Vincent Tappu, 28, are on trial at the Old Bailey for the kidnap, rape and murder of Arshid's niece Celine Dookhran, 20, and the attempted murder of another victim on 19 July last year. Both men deny the charges against them.

The court was told on Tuesday (30 January) that Arshid exchanged explicit messages with an undercover officer four years before the attacks took place.

Prosecutor Crispin Aylett QC read out a web chat with 'Andrew', in which Arshid said he would take photographs if the officer agreed to have sex with his 17-year-old virgin "girlfriend".

The jury heard Arshid told the officer: "Wish I could get hold of some chloroform. These kind of girls deserve rape - lol. Almost anything goes remember."

When Arshid was confronted by police in 2014, he said one of his labourers had used his computer to send the messages which he had since sold.

The Crown Prosecution Service concluded his explanation could not be rebutted and took no further action.

The prosecutor told the Old Bailey jury that photographs sent by Arshid to the officer were of the second alleged victim who survived the attack in 2017.

The court previously heard the men kidnapped the women last summer and put them in the boot of a car and took them to a £1.5m six-bedroom house in Kingston, south west London.

'Consensual sex'

The women were driven to the house that Arshid was turning into flats for the wealthy owner. During this journey Tappu was dropped off and took no further part in what followed.

At the property Arshid the prosecution alleges the builder raped both women, killed his niece and attempted to murder the second victim who cannot be named for legal reasons.

But Arshid claims the pair travelled with him willingly to the empty house in Kingston where he had consensual sex with both women.

He said after he slept with Dookhran the second woman "burst into the room" and "was going crazy".

"I left them to it and went outside to my truck," he said.

But he told the court when he came back he found the second woman had stabbed Dookhran to death in an upstairs bathroom.

He admitting helping the second woman put his niece in a downstairs freezer after she suggested they move her.

However, as they were clearing up the second woman flew at him with the knife.

He told the court: "There is no way I'm willing to be her next victim so I'm fighting for my life with this girl.

"All I can say is some of the injuries [to her] probably happened while we were standing and some while we were on the floor."

Arshid said the fight ended when they both became too tired. He said they discussed going abroad together before cleaning up and leaving.

The builder was later arrested the same day at a hotel in Folkestone in Kent, with the keys to the freezer's padlock.

Arshid, of no fixed abode, is accused of murder, attempted murder, rape of both women and the previous sexual assault and assault by penetration of the surviving woman when she was about 13.

Tappu, from Acton, west London, is accused of kidnap and false imprisonment, and possession of a firearm with intent.

The trial continues.